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Mr.  Charles  Josselyn 

Woodside 

San  Mateo  Co. 

California 


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IN  MEMOmAJA 
Charles   Josselyn. 

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Books  by 
SAMUEL  McCOMB,  D.D. 

PRAYER— What  It  Is  and  What  It  Does 
FAITH— The  Greatest  Power  in  the  World 
THE  NEW  LIFE— The  Secret  of  Happiness  and  Power 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 


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XTbe  1Rev>.  Samuel  /IDcComb,  H),H>, 

AUTHOR    OF" 
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•foarper  &  Brothers  publishers 
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The  New  Life 


Copyright,  191  7,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  February,  191 7 

B-R 


I 


TO     MY    BROTH  ER 

John  Warren  McComb 

AND    TO     MY     FRIEND 

Frederick  John  Hazledine 

BOTH    SERVING    AS    GOOD    SOLDIERS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 
"SOMEWHERE    IN    THE    WAR    ZONE" 
I    OFFER    THIS    LITTLE    BOOK" 


615952 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  The  Need  of  a  New  Life 1 

II.  Should  a  Man  Worry  about  His  Sins?  ...  6 

III.  The  Real  Meaning  of  Sin 10 

IV.  The  Need  of  Conversion 17 

V.  Is  Conversion  Possible? 25 

VI.  Sudden  Versus  Gradual  Conversion      ...  30 

VII.  The  Regeneration  of  Character 35 

VIII.  The  Power  of  The  New  Life 53 

IX.  The  Christ  Ideal 60 

X.  The  Sociological  Value  of  The  New  Life  .    .  64 

XI.  The  New  Life  Atoning  and  Optimistic    ...  71 


FOREWORD 

"Christianity  is  not  a  theory  nor  a  speculation,  but  a  Life. 
Not  a  philosophy  of  life,  but  a  life  and  a  living  process." 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 

"This  experience  conversion  has  been  repeated  and  testified 
to  by  countless  millions  of  civilized  men  and  women  in  all 
nations  and  of  all  degrees  of  culture.  It  signifies  not  whether 
the  conversion  be  sudden  or  gradual,  though  as  a  psychological 
phenomenon  it  is  more  remarkable  when  sudden,  and  there 
is  no  symptom  of  mental  aberration  otherwise.  But  even  as  a 
gradual  growth  in  mature  age  its  evidential  value  is  no  less. 
.  .  .  That  it  may  all  be  due  to  so-called  natural  causes  is  no 
evidence  against  its  so-called  supernatural  source  unless  we 
beg  the  whole  question  of  the  Divine  in  Nature." 

George  John  Romanes. 

"The  attitude  of  man  is  essentially  changed  when  the 
greatness  and  the  success  of  life  depend  on  a  participation 
in  a  superhuman  Spiritual  Life.  We  are  accustomed  to  view 
man  as  the  meeting-point  of  a  divergence  of  worlds,  and  to 
attribute  to  him  on  account  of  his  characteristic  nature  an 
incomparable  worth:  this  can  no  longer  be  asserted  of  him, 
for  the  New  and  the  Higher  lie  in  the  Spiritual  Life  as  openings 
of  an  independent  inner  world  and  not  in  man  as  man." 

Rudolf  Eucken. 


THE   NEW   LIFE 


THE    NEW    LIFE 


THE  NEED   OF  A  NEW  LIFE 

A  NY  one  who  dispassionately  considers  life, 
XJLas  we  know  it  to-day,  must  be  conscious 
that  at  its  heart  there  reigns  a  profound  un- 
rest. The  signs  of  this  disquietude  are  ev- 
erywhere present.  Modern  civilization  has 
indeed  been  created  by  man,  and  yet  the 
creator  stands  in  fear  of  his  creation.  For, 
as  in  the  story  of  the  inventor  who  made  a 
machine  of  marvelous  complexity  only  to 
find  himself  eventually  its  helpless  slave,  so 
modern  man  is  in  danger  of  becoming  a 
victim   of   the   very   system   which   he   has 

slowly  and  with  infinite  labor  built  up. 
l 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

fl  What  avails  all  this  feverish  activity, 
this  struggling  and  striving,  if  at  its  center 
there  are  no  spiritual  values,  nothing  to  give 
permanent  satisfaction?  Civilization  has 
done  great  things  and  offers  us  many  gifts, 
triumphs  of  scientific  skill.  Automobiles,  air- 
ships, wireless  telegraphy,  radium,  submarine 
vessels,  and  a  thousand  other  miracles  of 
genius  have  transformed  the  world  and 
stirred  hopes  of  still  greater  marvels  yet  to  be 
achieved.  The  elimination  of  suffering,  an 
increase  of  comfort,  the  spread  of  a  self- 
centered  culture — these  things  constitute  the 
modern  man's  gospel.  More  and  still  more 
of  these  is  the  panacea  for  his  spiritual  ills. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  many  to-day  are  awak- 
ening to  the  emptiness  of  it  all  and  are  crying 
out  for  redemption  from  the  dullness,  the 
conventional  pettiness,  the  intolerable  tedium 
of  life? 

ffl  But  where  is  to  be  found  the  redeemer? 
The  clear-cut  and  positive  faith  of  an  earlier 
time  is  no  longer  theirs.  With  some  the  sub- 
stitute is  a  morality  of  good  form,  a  worldly 
prudence  which  turns  ethics  into  the  hand- 

2 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

maid  of  secular  success;  with  others  of  a 
more  thoughtful  type  the  mind  is  directed 
to  some  form  of  social  service,  the  redemption 
of  the  community,  as  worthy  of  our  highest 
devotion.  Sociology  has  taken  the  place  of 
mysticism.  Work  for  the  uplift  of  the  un- 
privileged classes  leaves  but  little  room  for 
meditation  and  prayer,  whereby  alone  men 
of  an  earlier  time  believed  that  the  ideal 
life  could  be  won  and  enjoyed.  These  ex- 
pedients sooner  or  later  fail  to  meet  the 
demands  of  the  soul;  they  break  down  at 
those  critical  moments  of  moral  stress  or 
trial  when  they  are  most  needed. 

{J  Many  of  the  psychic  miseries  which  to- 
day defy  the  resources  of  medical  and  psy- 
chical skill  have  their  origin  here.  Alcohol, 
cocaine,  morphine — these  are  the  pretended 
redeemers  from  sorrow,  remorse,  ennui,  and 
world-weariness  to  which  so  many  betake 
themselves.  Promising  the  riches  and  free- 
dom of  a  larger  universe,  they  sell  the  soul 
into  a  degrading  and  well-nigh  inescapable 
bondage.     Men  and   women  pent  in  their 

prison-houses  are  groping  for  away  out.  They 
3 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

crave  some  "sweet  oblivious  antidote''  which 
will 

Cleanse  the  stuffed  bosom  from  the  perilous  stuff 
That  weighs  upon  the  heart. 

CJ  Were  it  not  for  the  relief  which  the  newer 
mystical  cults  of  our  time  give  their  adher- 
ents, existence  for  many  would  become  still 
more  frightful  than  it  is. 

I]J  What,  then,  is  the  deepest  need  of  the 
modern  man?  What  is  the  only  cure  that 
really  cures,  the  only  remedy  that  can  com- 
pass his  ills  by  leading  him  back  from  the 
circumference  of  experience,  where  he  is 
spending  his  substance  for  that  which  satis- 
fieth  not,  to  the  center  where  spiritual  values 
are  enthroned  and  he  knows  himself  to  be  at 
rest?  The  answer  is — a  new  life,  a  life  fuller, 
richer,  more  abundant,  sweeping  before  it 
ancient  hindrances,  releasing  imprisoned  pos- 
sibilities, and  flooding  the  consciousness  with 
unsuspected  power  and  undreamed-of  joy. 
Nothing  less  than  this  will  suffice.  Much 
precious  time,  given  us  for  the  realization  of 
our  vocation,  is  spent  in  finding  out  that 
4 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

apart  from  a  new  life  discontent  and  despair 
must  be  our  lot. 

0  What  do  we  mean  by  the  new  life?  We 
mean  the  life  which  ceases  to  concentrate  it- 
self on  a  part  and  which  broadens  out  until 
it  takes  in  the  whole.  Or,  to  put  it  in  re- 
ligious language,  the  life  which  begins  in  a 
new  attitude  to  God,  harmony  with  His  will, 
trust  in  and  love  to  Him,  leading  to  an  en- 
thusiastic co-operation  with  Him  in  the  re- 
demption of  the  world.  When  man  has  en- 
tered on  this  new  life,  and  the  habitual  center 
of  his  personal  energy  is  the  desire  so  to 
live  that  Christ  would  approve  his  life,  the 
thought  of  a  sudden  or  gradual  realization  of 
this  experience  is  entirely  indifferent.  Emo- 
tion, or  the  lack  of  it,  psycho-physical  states, 
however  abnormal,  are  absolutely  of  no  sig- 
nificance. The  only  adequate  test  of  the  life 
is  ethical  in  character.  To  what  has  the  ex- 
perience led?  What  does  it  mean  for  the 
individual  and  for  the  world? 


II 

SHOULD    A    MAN    WORRY    ABOUT    HIS    SINS? 

AT  the  threshold  of  the  spiritual  life 
XjL  stands  the  dark  and  sinister  figure  of 
Sin.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  average  man  to- 
day is  sadly  perplexed.  Old  traditions  of  this 
matter  no  longer  interest  him.  He  hears  in 
church  that  he  is  a  "miserable  offender," 
and  that  "there  is  no  health  in  him,"  but  the 
words  convey  no  intelligent  thought  and, 
therefore,  excite  no  painful  emotion.  The 
attitude  of  the  man,  active  in  the  affairs  of 
the  world,  toward  this  question  has  been 
described  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  in  terms  which 
a  few  years  ago  excited  much  controversy 
in  British  religious  circles. 

€][  "As  a  matter  of  fact,"  he  says,  "the 
higher  man  of  to-day  is  not  worrying  about 
his  sins,  still  less  about  their  punishment; 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

his  mission,  if  he  is  good  for  anything,  is  to 
be  up  and  doing."1  And  it  has  been  said 
more  recently  by  the  author  of  Father  Payne: 
"It  is  a  mistake,  I  think,  to  dwell  long  on 
one's  deficiencies.  What  one  has  got  to  do 
is  to  fill  one's  life  of  positive,  active,  beau- 
tiful things  until  there  is  no  room  for  the 
ugly  intruders.  .  .  .  Turn  your  back  on  it 
all,  look  at  the  beautiful  things;  leave  a  thief 
to  catch  a  thief,  and  the  dead  to  bury  the 
dead;  do  not  sniff  at  the  evil  thing,  go  and 
get  a  breath  of  fresh  air." 

€|  This  is  the  doctrine  of  the  healthy- 
minded  philosophers  and  cults.  If  you  stum- 
ble and  fall,  do  not  waste  time  in  speculating 
as  to  the  why  and  wherefore  of  your  mishap, 
but  rise  at  once  and  resume  your  journey. 
The  business  of  life  must  be  carried  on  and 
it  is  folly  to  waste  time  in  brooding  and  curi- 
ous introspection.  As  Matthew  Arnold  says, 
"Sin  is  not  a  monster  to  be  mused  on,  but  a 
weakness  to  be  got  rid  of." 

ffl  To  the  man  who  has  been  confronted  by 
his  moral  blunders  is  given  the  advice  of 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  April,  1904,  p.  266. 
7 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

Virgil  to  Dante,  who  was  too  much  attracted 
by  certain  shadows  that  crossed  his  path  in 
the  Inferno:  "One  glance  at  them  and  then 
pass  on."  Such  teaching  contains  a  healthy 
corrective  to  the  one-sidedness  of  traditional 
religion.  Such  a  mere  lamentation  over  sin, 
which  leads  to  no  systematic  effort  to  become 
better  and  to  lead  a  good  life,  is  a  barren 
waste  of  emotional  energy.  It  weakens  the 
soul  and,  by  concentrated  attention  on  the 
evil,  arms  sin  with  new  strength  and  virulence. 
€]|  And  yet  a  little  reflection  will  show 
that  the  Christian  emphasis  on  sin,  which 
is  often  deplored,  while  contrasting  it  with 
the  pagan  emphasis  on  virtue,  has  something 
to  say  for  itself.  Can  we  drift  into  goodness 
without  thought  and  without  effort?  Analo- 
gies taken  from  nature  are  liable  to  mislead 
us  here.  The  flower  grows  by  natural  neces- 
sity; the  insect  passes  through  its  various 
steps  of  development  without  any  thought 
on  its  part;  but  we  are  spiritual  beings,  and 
our  growth  is  achieved  by  decisions  of  the 
will.  But  how  can  we  decide  without  self- 
reflection?    And  how  can  we  reflect  on  what 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

might  have  been  without  bitter  regret,  re- 
gret which  may  well  bring  tears  that  scald 
the  heart?  /  .  ^  ^v^yi^ 

O  It  is  a  fundamental  law  that  all  moral 
progress  is  possible  only  through  a  breach 
with  the  past.  But  does  not  this  imply  a 
condemnation  of  the  past  as  something  that 
need  not  have  been?  The  truth  is  that  when 
we  speak  of  sin  as  a  stumble  or  a  fall  we  un- 
consciously regard  it  as  an  accident  for 
which  we  are  hardly,  if  at  all,  responsible. 
Why  worry  over  such  a  slight  misfortune? 
How  foolish  to  cry  over  spilt  milk!  Forget 
it,  ignore  it — and  all  will  be  well.  The 
theory  is  most  seductive  and  alluring,  if 
only  it  would  work.  But  does  it  work?  Can 
we  go  on  indefinitely  without  reflecting  on 
our  own  nature  and  the  causes  of  our  blun- 
ders, on  the  best  means  to  be  employed  for 
the  destruction  of  undesirable  habits  and  for 
the  acquirement  of  good  ones?  And  if  we 
could,  would  it  be  wise  or  safe  for  us  to  do 
so?  Obviously  there  is  some  misunderstand- 
ing here,  and  we  need  to  have  our  minds 
cleared  up  on  the  point. 


Ill 

THE   REAL  MEANING    OF   SIN 

WHAT,  then,  do  we  mean  by  Sin  ?  Some 
will  have  it  that  the  word  has  lost  its 
meaning  and  may  now  be  struck  from  the 
vocabulary  of  the  spirit.  This  anguish  under 
which  our  fathers  groaned  is  now  discovered 
to  be  a  superstition  born  of  ignorance,  hered- 
ity, and  environment.  Henceforth  life,  freed 
from  medieval  gloom,  can  move  forward  con- 
tentedly and  peacefully  and  the  world  become 
as  Renan  said,  "a  pleasant  promenade." 
Now  it  goes  without  saying  that  truth  must 
be  reinterpreted  from  age  to  age,  but  any 
reinterpretation  which  leaves  us  more  con- 
tent with  the  world  and  ourselves  may  well 
be  suspected  of  unreality. 

4J  "Note  well  that  it  is  not  pleasantness, 

but  force,  that  sets  the  mark  for  truth;    we 
10 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

have  to  require  of  our  faith  not  what  is 
agreeable  to  the  indolent  spirit,  but  what  is 
at  once  a  spur  and  a  promise.  What  do  you 
think  of  hell?  The  doctrine  of  hell  made 
religion  at  one  time  a  matter  of  first-rate 
importance;  getting  your  soul  saved  made  a 
difference  in  your  empirical  destiny.  If  your 
idealism  wipes  out  your  fear  of  hell,  your 
idealism  has  played  you  false.  Truth  must 
be  transformed;  but  the  transformation  of 
truth  must  be  marked  by  a  conservation  of 
power."1 

fl  One  extreme  produces  another.  We  are 
suffering  to-day  from  a  reaction  against  the 
exaggeration  of  an  earlier  time.  Doctrines 
of  "original  sin,"  "total  depravity,"  and 
1 '  everlasting  punishment ' '  become  intoler- 
able and  unbelievable,  and  straightway  it  is 
forgotten  that  they  were  not  woven  out  of 
nothing,  but  were  unhappy  and  overstrained 
expressions  of  a  profound  spiritual  experience. 
In  our  rejection  of  the  doctrine  we  ignore 
the  experience  that  lay  behind  it.  It  cannot 
be  too  often  insisted  on  that  the  experience 

1  JJocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  xjv, 

u 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

of  sin  is  distinct  from  every  theory  of  it. 
The  great  analysts  of  human  nature,  the 
novelists  and  dramatists  of  the  modern  world, 
may  differ  from  one  another  and  from  the  theo- 
logian as  to  the  meaning  of  sinful  experience, 
but  they  are  agreed  as  to  its  tragic  reality. 

C]J  The  somber  genius  of  Hawthorne  sees 
its  awakening  in  a  remorse  of  conscience 
which  can  be  relieved  only  by  the  purifying 
pain  of  public  confession.  George  Meredith 
finds  in  wilful  wrong-doing  an  irrevocable 
evil,  a  power  which  does  not  exhaust  itself 
in  the  wrong  action,  but  gives  rise  to  an  end- 
less series  of  evils.  Ibsen  traces  the  cruelty 
and  horror  of  sin  in  the  disasters  that  it  in- 
flicts upon  innocent  posterity.  Dostoyevsky 
finds  in  sin  something  so  destructive  to  the 
sinner's  own  nature  that  redemption  is  pos- 
sible only  by  atonement,  by  drinking  to  its 
dregs  the  bitter  cup  of  penalty,  that  thus 
through  the  pains  of  purgatory  he  may  win 
his  way  to  freedom  and  to  peace.  Unless 
we  are  to  reject  the  testimony  of  all  the  better 
minds  of  our  time  we  must  brand  as  the 
shallowest  of  sophisms  the  notion  that  sin  is 
1* 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

an  illusion  of  our  own  minds,  and  will  vanish 
if  only  we  persist  in  denying  its  reality.  To 
realize  the  meaning  of  sin  in  feeling  and  in 
thought  is  not  the  mark  of  a  sick  soul,  but 
rather  the  sign  of  returning  spiritual  health. 

0  If  our  age  is  deficient  in  the  mystical 
sense  of  sin,  it  is  only  fair  to  acknowledge 
that  there  has  dawned  on  it  a  new  vision  of 
sin  as  a  great  social  phenomenon.  A  changed 
feeling  about  sin  is  due  in  part  to  the  passing 
away  of  the  old  individualism  and  the  birth 
in  our  time  of  a  social  conscience.  There  are 
great  corporate  sins  in  which,  perhaps,  we 
have  had  no  actual  share,  but  of  which  we 
feel  as  though  we  were  guilty.  We  are  not 
ourselves  saloon-keepers,  yet  we  feel  that  we 
are  responsible  for  all  the  crime  and  degrada- 
tion which  the  saloon  system  works.  We 
do  not  ourselves  send  children  into  the  fac- 
tories and  mills  where  they  are  stunted 
physically,  intellectually,  and  morally;  never- 
theless, we  cannot  be  at  peace  until  the  load 
has  been  lifted  from  our  conscience.  We  do 
not  receive  rents  for  rotten  tenement-houses; 
though  we  know  they  were  built  before  we 
13 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

were  born,  their  continued  existence  is  a 
scandal  which  at  all  costs  we  must  remove. 
Sin  is  thus  seen  to  be  selfishness,  and  selfish- 
ness is  want  of  love  for  others. 

fj  The  man  of  to-day  also  recognizes  sin 
as  vice,  as  an  offense  against  his  own  char- 
acter, a  corruption  of  his  own  nature.  Alco- 
holism, drug  addiction,  unchastity,  the  lust  of 
the  eyes,  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  and  the  pride 
of  life,  avarice,  gambling — these  evils  are 
seen  to  be  evil  by  bitter  experience  of  their 
enslaving  and  degrading  power.  The  psycho- 
logical history  of  any  one  vice  is  pretty 
much  that  of  the  rest.  Some  time  ago  there 
shambled  into  my  study  a  pathetic  figure; 
physically  he  was  a  wreck  with  all  the  signs 
of  degeneration  writ  large  upon  him — puffy 
eyelids,  trembling  hands,  twitching  muscles, 
the  whole  man  nerveless,  ineffective,  broken. 

€][  Gradually  I  drew  from  him  his  tragic 
history.  For  twenty  years  he  had  been  a 
slave,  bound  hand  and  foot,  in  the  grasp  of 
the  alcoholic  habit.  Born  into  a  highly  re- 
spectable and  religious  family,  he  assumed 

great  business  responsibilities;    when  fagged 
14 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

out  with  a  heavy  morning's  work  it  was  his 
custom  to  take  a  little  alcohol  that  he  might 
have  strength  to  hold  up  for  the  rest  of  the 
day.  The  habit  grew  until  he  became  a 
confirmed  drunkard;  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence followed.  His  powers  as  a  business 
man  were  undermined,  disgrace  and  humilia- 
tion overtook  his  family.  He  himself  was 
for  a  time  an  inmate  of  an  inebriate's  home, 
only,  however,  to  come  out  with  a  patho- 
logical craving  still  stronger  than  before. 
Again  and  again  during  the  past  twenty 
years  he  had  made  violent  efforts  to  break 
his  chains,  and  occasionally  it  had  looked 
as  though  he  had  won  deliverance;  but  again 
and  again  his  hopes  were  deceived.  He  said 
to  me:  "You  need  not  tell  me  to  abstain; 
I  have  no  power  to  keep  from  alcohol.  My 
will  is  gone;  if  you  can  put  a  new  will  in  me 
there  may  be  some  chance,  but  as  it  is  I 
have  neither  hope  nor  faith." 

t]J  This  man  found  a  way  out  of  his  prison. 

But  the  point  to  be  emphasized  is  that  in 

essence  his  case  illustrates  the  history  of  all 

habits  that  tend  to  corrupt  character,     We 

U 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

call  such  a  man  dissolute  because,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  his  psychic  energies  are  dissolved, 
their  unity  destroyed,  and  the  man  set  against 
himself,  v.  We  all  know,  either  by  experience 
or  by  observation,  what  sin  is  in  this  sense, 
and  to-day  we  are  learning,  as  never  before, 
to  sympathize  not  only  with  the  suffering 
which  others  have  brought  on  a  man,  but 
also  with  the  suffering  which  he  has  brought 
upon  himself  o 


rkhal   u>.JSnk*  'Wt^ 


s&l  Kl«  fi 


tfahY    rnx*     Qtgft  \A     Uejtftn  t  t>  Iaj 

vjofc 


IV 

THE    NEED    OF    CONVERSION 

SO  far  we  have  been  within  the  moral 
sphere,  but  now  religion  comes  and  the 
real  gravity  of  sin  appears,  for  religion  lifts 
man  out  of  space  and  time  and  sets  him  face 
to  face  with  the  Eternal;  that  is,  it  puts  him 
in  the  constant  presence  of  God.  Black  as 
are  the  treacheries  we  commit  against  others, 
pitiful  as  are  the  wretchednesses  we  inflict 
upon  ourselves,  they  assume  a  still  more 
tragic  meaning  when  we  trace  them  all  back 
to  their  ultimate  spiritual  root.  Religion 
tells  us  that  the  source  of  all  our  sins,  so  far 
as  it  is  not  caused  by  heredity  and  environ- 
ment, is  want  of  harmony  with  God  or  with 
the  universe.  For  religion  is  a  conception  of 
the  will  of  God  or  the  order  of  the  universe, 
and  defines  sin  as  the  contradiction  of  this 
Will  or  Harmony.     Now  the  Christian  re- 

17 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

ligion,  as  represented  by  the  simple  teaching 
of  its  Founder,  proclaims  sin  to  be  a  false 
relation  to  God,  lack  of  trust  in  God's 
fatherly  love  and,  therefore,  a  refusal  to 
yield  ourselves  to  Him  as  the  organs  of  His 
purpose  of  good  to  the  world.  It  is  the 
prodigal's  claim  to  a  spurious  independence: 
"Give  me  the  portion  of  goods  that  falleth 
to  me."  It  is  as  though  he  said,  "I  am  my 
own  to  do  with  as  I  may,  and  I  mean  to  go 
my  own  way  and  live  my  own  life/5 

€[[  But  man  is  not  made  for  himself;  he  is 
made  in  and  for  God,  the  self-revealing  Love 
that  seeks  to  enter  into  communion  with  him. 
This  is  man's  deepest  life,  his  spiritual  des- 
tiny. In  the  very  center  of  his  being  there 
is  a  spot  sacred  to  God  where  none  other 
may  intrude,  and  from  this  central  spot  come 
out  inspiring  and  directing  impulses  that 
harmonize  will  and  conscience,  thought  and 
feeling,  desire  and  effort.  When  this  is  the 
case,  the  soul  is  a  harmony,  and  harmony 
is  salvation. 

€][  Suppose,  through  indifference  to  or  es- 
trangement from   God,  this   inner  sanctum 

18 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

is  empty,  what  happens?  The  vacuum  is 
filled  by  an  inrush  of  temptations,  seduc- 
tions, worldly  ambitions,  sensual  passions, 
self-seeking  aims,  and  these  set  up  their 
throne  and  establish  their  anarchical  power 
over  us.  All  life,  both  in  relation  to  ourselves 
and  to  others,  gets  its  whole  meaning  and 
worth  from  the  principle  which  governs  it. 
Hence  the  vital  question  for  every  man  is, 
what  kind  of  a  personality  am  I  cultivating — 
God-centered  or  self -centered?  If  the  false 
self  rules,  then  all  is  false.  A  man  may  pass 
through  the  world  for  half  a  lifetime  con- 
scious indeed  of  faults,  faults  of  temper, 
speech,  and  conduct,  weary  of  existence,  dis- 
satisfied with  his  environment,  and  yet  he 
may  never  see  the  root  of  all  his  malady. 
Only  if,  by  the  grace  of  Heaven,  he  gets  a 
vision  of  the  truth,  does  he  discover  by  con- 
trast the  real  source  of  his  discontent.  He 
had  never  dug  down  to  the  rock-bottom  fact; 
he  had  never  come  to  terms  with  the  ultimate 
mystery  which  we  call  God. 

€J  This  does  not  mean  that  he  may  not 
have  been  a  kind-hearted  and  honest  man, 

19 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

but  it  does  mean  that  he  falls  short  of  the 
vocation  to  which  religion  calls  him,  and  to 
which  he  is  pledged  by  his  very  nature  as 
man  to  be  a  son  of  God  and  a  co-worker 
with  Him  in  the  making  of  His  world.  Only 
as  man  lives  in  surrender  to  the  Divine  Life 
is  he  able  to  master  himself  and  love  all 
other  men  with  the  measure  of  the  love  God 
bears  to  all  His  children.  If  we  trust  God, 
we  will  reverence  His  image  in  our  own 
souls  too  much  to  permit  a  defacing  stain, 
and  wilfully  to  hurt  another  soul  will  seem  the 
worst  sin  in  the  dark  catalogues  of  crime. 

C|  Thus  the  moral  and  social  orders  rest 
upon  the  spiritual  order.  It  is  my  relation  to 
God  that  determines  my  relation  to  the  world 
and  to  myself.  In  sinning  I  strike  a  blow  at  the 
varied  relationships  of  which  I  am  the  center, 
and  still  more  fundamentally  at  the  spiritual 
constitution  of  the  universe  on  which  these 
relations  rest,  at  the  will  to  love  which  ener- 
gizes at  the  heart  of  things.  If  there  is  a  God, 
and  if  His  character  is  like  that  of  Jesus 
Christ,  we  cannot  stop  short  of  this  serious 

view  of  moral  evil.    It  is  true  that  in  sinning 
20 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

we  did  not  intend  to  bring  down  the  very 
fabric  of  things  in  ruin  upon  our  heads — that 
were  an  act  of  satanic  proportions.  But 
this  conviction  seizes  us  only  when  the  ideal 
has  been  flashed  on  us  through  some  appeal; 
it  may  be  the  argument  of  a  noble  book, 
or  the  chance  word  of  a  passer-by,  or  a 
familiar  text  of  Scripture  clothed  with  re- 
vealing power,  or  the  reflection  of  our  wrong- 
doing in  the  shame  and  sorrow  of  another. 
Then  we  turn  in  loathing  from  the  foul  thing, 
we  condemn  ourselves  and  resolve  to  lead  a 
new  life.  The  new  desire  is  born  within  us 
and  we  are  happy  in  the  thought  that  we  have 
done  with  evil  and  that  our  enemy  lies  dead 
at  last. 

ffl  Alas  for  our  short-lived  happiness!  Our 
new  attitude  of  soul  leads  to  new  and  dis- 
concerting revelations.  The  soul's  life  is  a 
unity.  As  Benjamin  Jowett  wisely  remarks: 
"Our  mental  and  moral  nature  is  one. 
We  cannot  break  ourselves  into  pieces  in 
action  any  more  than  in  thought.  The  whole 
man  is  in  every  part  and  in  every  act.    This 

is  not  a  mere  mode  of  thought,  but  a  truth 
3  21 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

of  great  practical  importance.  *  Easier  to 
change  many  things  than  one'  is  the  common 
saying.  '  Easier/  we  might  add,  'in  re- 
ligion and  morality  to  change  the  whole 
than  the  part/ "  l  While  the  awakened 
conscience  is  focused  on  this  or  that  sinful 
act  or  habit,  the  light  that  reveals  this  dark 
spot  brings  into  view  other  unnoticed  per- 
versities, and  as  these  are  illumined  we  are 
conscious  that  still  others  lie  in  the  shadow 
beyond. 

€|  In  other  words,  we  discover  that  our 
sin  is  not  an  accidental  scar  on  the  soul,  like 
a  wart  or  a  wen  on  the  body,  but  is  a  symptom 
of  a  deep-seated  disorder  which  affects  the 
entire  spiritual  organism.  What  the  awakened 
soul  deplores  is  not  merely  the  act,  but  the 
character,  the  trend  of  the  will,  the  personal 
life  which  made  such  an  act  or  habit  possible. 
It  feels  itself  entangled  in  a  network  of  evil 
tendencies;  it  resolves  and  vows  and  prays. 
It  struggles  with  all  its  might,  and  the  conflict 
rises  in  some  instances,  as  in  the  case  of  an 
Augustine  or  a  Bunyan,  into  a  painful  agony. 

1  Interpretation  of  Scripture,  p.  321. 

22 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

€]J  But  the  "enemy  faints  not  nor  faileth," 
and  gradually  the  truth  is  driven  home  that 
no  reformation  of  the  old  way  of  living,  no 
rehabilitation  of  the  old  man,  will  meet  the 
spiritual  situation.  A  radical  transformation, 
a  change  penetrating  to  the  roots  of  life,  a 
regeneration  of  the  springs  of  action,  a  re- 
newal of  the  inmost  self  whereby  the  soul, 
which  hitherto  has  been  set  on  some  evil, 
now  wills  the  good  simply  because  it  is  good — 
this  is  the  supreme  need  of  the  soul.  It  is 
the  feeling  of  this  need  that  goes  forth  in  that 
miserable  cry:  "O  wretched  man  that  I 
am!  Who  shall  deliver  me?"  The  ancient 
world  had  no  answer  to  that  question.  It 
knew  of  no  spiritual  dynamic  which  might 
change  the  man's  desire  and  move  the  will 
to  new  issues. 

tfl  Aristotle,  in  the  greatest  of  his  ethical 
treatises,  has  written  more  profoundly  than 
any  of  the  ancients  concerning  the  power 
of  habit.  He  entertained  but  small  hope  for 
the  generality  of  men.  In  his  view  the  ma- 
jority could  never  rise  to  a  really  virtuous 
life,   and   must   be   restrained   by  law   and 

23 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

punishment.  Only  those  in  whom  there  is 
a  predisposition  to  the  "love  of  what  is 
honorable  and  the  hate  of  what  is  disgraceful " 
could  hope  to  profit  by  ethical  training.  In 
order  to  be  good  a  man  must  cease  from  doing 
evil  and  must  acquire  the  habit  of  doing  good. 
But  neither  Aristotle  nor  any  other  Greek 
teacher  was  able  to  point  to  any  fount  of 
power  from  which  the  soul  could  draw  rein- 
forcements which  would  enable  it  to  shake 
off  the  growth  of  years  and  develop  new 
faculties  for  virtue  and  well-doing.  But  this 
very  thing  which  the  highest  thought  of  the 
ancient  world  could  not  do,  the  revelation 
of  a  higher  spiritual  good,  the  gift  of  religion, 
and  more  especially  the  Christian  religion, 
is  accomplishing  every  day. 


IS   CONVERSION   POSSIBLE? 

ALL  around  us  are  men  and  women  wast- 
l  ing  their  lives  in  futility  and  ineffi- 
ciency, desiring  to  be  good  and  to  do  good,  yet 
never  achieving  their  desire.  Their  emotion  is 
often  stirred  under  the  appeal  of  the  preacher 
or  the  dramatist,  but  never  issues  in  any 
permanent  uplift  of  the  life.  They  spend 
their  time  in  sinning  and  repenting,  and 
their  very  repenting  is  a  source  of  weakness; 
it  but  weakens  the  will  and  deepens  their 
bondage.  Yet  were  they  upbraided  by  some 
critic  of  their  deeds  they  would  in  all  like- 
lihood use  the  words  which  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  puts  into  the  mouth  of  his  imag- 
inary sinner,  Markheim:  "You  would  judge 
me  by  my  acts !   But  can  you  not  look  within? 

Can  you  not  understand  that  evil  is  hateful 
25 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

to  me;  can  you  not  see  within  me  a  clear 
writing  of  conscience  never  blurred  by  any 
wilful  sophistry,  although  too  often  disre- 
garded? Can  you  not  read  me  for  a  thing 
that  surely  must  be  common  as  humanity — 
the  unwilling  sinner?"  Thus  do  men  play 
tricks  with  conscience  and  cover  up  the 
baseness  of  weak  compliance  with  desire. 

€]J  What  can  break  through  the  vicious 
circle  and  set  them  free?  Only  a  clear  vision 
of  themselves,  as  responsible  for  their  inde- 
cision, and  of  the  truth  that  unity  of  con- 
science and  will  can  be  achieved  only  by  an 
inner  transformation  whereby  a  man's  small 
and  pettily  human  self  dies  and  a  larger 
self  is  born.  For  sinners  such  as  these  the 
gateway  into  the  new  life  leads  through  a 
sharp,  abrupt,  irrevocable  decision,  call  it 
what  you  will — repentance,  conversion,  the 
new  birth,  the  putting  off  the  old  man  and 
the  putting  on  the  new,  or,  if  you  prefer 
psychological  language,  the  unifying  of  per- 
sonality. 

€][  Now  the  word  "conversion"  has  had 
unfortunate  associations,  and  cultured  per- 

26 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

sous  much  mistrust  it.  It  has  been  mixed 
up  with  the  hysteria  and  emotional  excite- 
ment of  popular  revivalism,  and  has  been 
made  to  mean  at  times  something  magical 
and  abnormal.  It  has  been  so  soiled  with  all 
ignoble  use  that  the  mighty  spiritual  fact 
which  it  seeks  to  express  is  often  obscured, 
or  forgotten,  or  bluntly  denied.  To-day, 
however,  among  psychologists  and  students  of 
religion  it  is  coming  to  its  own,  and  a  whole 
literature  has  been  devoted  to  its  study  and 
comprehension. 

Cj  Unhappily  the  term  has  been  narrowed 
not  only  in  religious,  but  also  in  scientific 
circles  to  a  sudden  and  dramatic  religious 
experience,  in  contrast  to  the  processes  of 
gradual  growth.  Professor  Starbuck,  in  his 
Psychology  of  Religion,  distinguishes  between 
the  "sudden  and  gradual"  types  as  "con- 
version" and  "religious  growth  not  involving 
conversion."  Professor  Ames,  in  his  Psycholo- 
gy of  Religious  Experience,  says:  "Conver- 
sion designates  the  more  sudden,  intense,  and 
extreme  emotional  experience.  It  is  the  re- 
sult of  immediate,  direct  control  and  sug- 

27 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

gestion  on  the  part  of  evangelists,  parents, 
teachers."1  This  limitation  of  the  word  is 
unfortunate  and  is  liable  to  give  rise  to  wrong 
impressions,  clouding  the  fact  that  the  King- 
dom of  God  consists  of  converted  persons, 
some  of  whom  had  experienced  a  sudden 
conversion,  and  some  of  whom  had  not. 

€][  The  prejudice  against  the  possibility  of 
a  sudden  conversion  springs  from  lack  of 
insight  into  the  power  of  religion  and  into  the 
nature  of  the  human  mind.  However  we 
may  account  for  the  fact,  it  has  been  abun- 
dantly proved  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the 
"soul's  leap  to  God"  in  which  time  is  a  mere 
irrelevance.  This  experience  has  been  shared 
not  only  by  the  ignorant  and  the  outcast 
classes  who  have  led  wicked  or  careless  lives, 
but  has  marked  an  epoch  in  the  careers  of 
some  of  the  greatest  and  most  influential 
men,  such  as  Paul,  Augustine,  Luther,  Crom- 
well, Savonarola,  Ignatius  Loyola,  Wesley, 
Schleiermacher,  Chalmers,  Newman,  and  Tol- 
stoi, and  many  another  that  might  be  named. 
The  consideration  that  the  experience  does 

*P.  257. 
28 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

not  appeal  to  us,  but  rather  awakens  suspi- 
cious or  hostile  reflections,  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  refuse  to  believe  that  others  may 
have  trodden  a  spiritual  path  which  we  have 
not  known.  There  are  many  who  sympathize 
with  the  sentiment  of  a  distinguished  lawyer 
who  once  said  to  me,  "I  would  prefer  to 
trust  the  ninety  and  nine  just  persons  that 
need  no  repentance  before  the  one  sinner 
that  repenteth,"  or  with  the  feeling  of  Emer- 
son when  he  said,  "Save  me  from  the  man 
that  repents."  But  the  judgment  of  men 
like  the  author  of  Ecce  Homo,  Sidgwick,  and 
James  may  be  accepted,  and  it  is  that  con- 
version is  a  fundamental  element  in  the 
Christian  religion  and  that,  as  a  rule,  it  brings 
with  it  a  changed  attitude  to  life  which  is 
fairly  permanent* 


VI 

SUDDEN  VERSUS  GRADUAL  CONVERSION 

THE  gravest  objection,  however,  has  been 
made  on  the  ground  that  a  sudden  con- 
version is  a  violation  of  the  law  of  spiritual 
continuity  which  runs  through  all  life.  Every 
effect  has  a  cause;  this  holds  good  in  the 
spiritual  as  well  as  in  the  material  world. 
"Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he 
also  reap,"  "Sow  the  wind  and  reap  the 
whirlwind" — such  phrases  have  become  pro- 
verbial. We  speak  of  the  consequences  of 
sin  as  if  they  were,  in  some  sense,  separable 
from  it,  but  deeper  reflection  assures  us  that 
they  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  evil  act,  and 
that  the  punishment  of  evil  is  more  evil.  It 
is  not  that  sin  works  death;  it  is  that  sin  is 
death.  The  higher  thought  of  man  in  every 
age  has  borne  witness  to  this  truth;    Greek 

30 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

tragedy  and  Jewish  prophecy  and  Indian 
wisdom  are  at  one  in  proclaiming  the  fatal 
continuity  of  wrong. 

fl  There  are  perhaps  few  passages  more 
frequently  quoted  in  discussions  like  the  pres- 
ent than  that  in  which  Omar  Khayyam 
sounds  a  dirge  over  the  irreparable  past: 

The  Moving  Finger  writes;    and,  having  writ, 
Moves  on:   not  all  your  Piety  nor  Wit 
Shall  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  Line, 
Nor  all  your  Tears  wash  out  a  Word  of  it. 

€J  Omar  is  right;  no  power  in  heaven  or 
on  earth  can  make  the  past  not  the  past. 
What  we  have  written  in  our  book  of  life 
we  have  written.  This  somber  truth  should 
be  allowed  to  sink  into  our  minds  lest  we 
make  a  mock  of  sin,  or  imagine  that  we  can 
with  impunity  despise  the  regularities  of  the 
spiritual  universe.  But  it  is  equally  vital 
that,  having  learned  this  lesson,  we  should 
pass  on  to  some  larger  truth,  otherwise  the 
cause  of  goodness  is  seriously  endangered  by 
the  paralysis  of  our  energies  which  the  sense 
of  the  irreparable  always  works.  A  half- 
truth  taken  by  itself  is  negative  and  destruc- 

31 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

tive,  whereas  the  larger  truth  is  affirmative 
and  creative.  The  one  subtracts  from,  the 
other  adds  to,  our  psychic  powers.  Now  the 
larger  truth  may  be  expressed  thus:  while 
the  past  cannot  be  obliterated  from  the  his- 
tory of  the  individual  or  of  the  moral  uni- 
verse, it  can  be  transformed;  it  can  be  made 
to  yield  up  the  secret  of  new  growths,  un- 
dreamed-of  advance  in  the  development  of 
the  best  self. 

IJ  There  is  another  law  under  which  we  can 
bring  our  lives;  it  is  the  law  of  repentance. 
It  is  possible  to  make  a  new  beginning,  to 
transfigure  the  past,  to  find  in  it  new  inspira- 
tion, new  warning,  new  incentive  to  fresh 
effort.  As  Phillips  Brooks  has  said,  "A  man 
can  get  rid  of  his  past  by  getting  a  future 
out  of  it."  The  character  can  be  reborn  out 
of  selfishness,  worldliness,  and  the  wayward 
impulses  of  the  natural  man  into  a  life  of 
sacrifice  and  brotherhood,  and  of  love  strong 
even  unto  death.  This  ennobling  possibility 
was  not  unknown  to  the  pre-Christian  world. 
Socrates  taught  that  virtue  is  knowledge 
and  that  the  way  to  knowledge  is  a  convic- 

32 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

tion  of  one's  ignorance.  Seneca  could  say, 
"I  regard  myself  not  so  much  as  a  reformed 
as  a  transfigured  man."  But  it  is  in  the 
Christian  religion  that  this  possibility  steps 
forth  with  a  rapturous  confidence,  which 
sweeps  all  before  it  and  for  many  a  soul 
makes  the  whole  world  new.  Nor  is  this  the 
enthusiastic  fancy  of  an  overstrained  op- 
timism. 

€|  The  philosophical  basis  of  conversion  is 
found  in  the  teaching  of  the  brilliant  French- 
man, Henri  Bergson.  For  him  the  universe 
is  not  a  dead  machine,  but  a  vital  organic 
process.  Life  is  ever  pressing  forward  to  new 
forms,  and  we  must  believe  that  for  even 
<£(-  God  Himself  there  are  always  dramatic  sur- 
prises in  the  history  of  the  world.  "That 
each  instant  is  a  fresh  endowment,  that  the 
new  is  ever  upspringing,  that  the  form  just 
come  into  existence  (although  when  once 
produced  it  may  be  regarded  as  an  effect  de- 
termined by  its  cause)  could  never  have  been 
foreseen — because  the  causes  here,  unique  in 
their  kind,  are  part  of  the  effect,  have  come 
into  existence  with  it  and  are  determined  by 

33 


:/. 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

it  as  much  as  they  determine  it — all  this  we 
can  feel  within  ourselves  and  divine  by  sym- 
pathy outside  ourselves,  but  we  cannot  think 
it  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  nor  express 
it  in  terms  of  pure  understanding."1  The 
possibility  of  conversion  springs  out  of  great- 
ness, the  sovereignty  of  the  soul. 
1  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  172  seq. 


VII 

THE  REGENERATION  OF  CHARACTER 

THERE  is  something  in  the  soul  which  the 
past  has  been  incompetent  to  express — 
something  over  and  above  the  dull  monotony 
of  sin.  The  old  mystics  called  it  "the  seed 
of  Christ,"  the  theologian  names  it  "the 
image  of  God,"  the  psychologist  interprets 
it  as  the  "ideal  self."  Let  the  man  return 
to  this  his  real  nature,  sloughing  off  all  that 
has  overlaid  it;  and  thus  a  new  law  comes 
into  operation,  modifying  the  action  of  the 
old;  in  Paul's  mystical  phrase,  "the  law  of 
the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus."  And  now 
the  old  law  of  continuity  which  worked 
against  him  begins  to  work  for  him.  It  has 
come  over  to  his  side.  If  every  effect  has  a 
cause,  it  is  also  true  that  every  cause  has  an 
effect,  and  a  new  cause  has  now  begun  to 
35 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

operate.  Henceforth  sowing  not  to  the  flesh, 
but  to  the  spirit,  he  will  reap  a  more  abundant 
life.  "New  habits  can  be  launched,"  says 
James,  "on  condition  of  there  being  new 
stimuli  and  new  excitements.  Now  life 
abounds  in  these  and  sometimes  there  are 
such  critical  and  revolutionary  experiences 
that  they  change  a  man's  whole  scale  of 
values  and  system  of  ideas.  With  such  cases, 
the  old  order  of  his  habits  will  be  ruptured; 
and,  if  the  new  motives  are  lasting,  new  habits 
will  be  formed,  and  build  up  in  him  a  new  or 
regenerate  nature."1  It  is  not  that  goodness 
creates  life;  it  is  that  goodness  is  life. 

CJ  Now  it  does  not  matter  whether  the  re- 
turn to  the  real  self  is  made  in  a  moment  or  in 
the  passage  of  years;  the  essential  point  is 
that  it  can  be  made.  Moreover,  the  "sud- 
den" conversion  is  not  so  sudden  as  it  seems. 
It  will  be  found  that,  in  every  case,  it  has 
been  led  up  to  subconsciously  for  years,  per- 
haps, and  the  change  simply  marked  the 
point  where  the  forces  which  had  been  strug- 
gling in  the  subconscious  realm  cease  their 

1  Talks  on  Psychology,  p.  77. 
36 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

conflict  because  the  ideal  man  has  captured 
the  entire  field  of  consciousness.  Neither 
Paul  nor  Augustine  leaped  into  the  new  life 
from  the  platform  of  atheistic  unbelief;  both 
were  men  of  profound  religious  feeling, 
though  in  Paul  the  ethical  element  was  more 
strongly  marked  than  in  Augustine. 

€j  Paul  tells  us  his  soul,  before  that  conse- 
crated hour  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  was  like 
the  world  before  God  said,  "Let  there  be 
light";  then  suddenly  a  glory  that  never 
was  on  sea  nor  land  shone  into  his  heart, 
the  darkness  vanished,  and  instead  of  chaos 
there  came  a  sweet  and  ordered  humanity. 
Yet  this  spiritual  transformation  implied  a 
preceding  unconscious  preparation.  Paul's 
passion  for  righteousness,  his  determination 
to  dig  down  to  the  foundation  of  the  spiritual 
life,  his  enthusiasm  for  the  right,  and  quite 
possibly  the  impression  made  upon  him  sub- 
consciously by  the  voice  and  figure  of  Jesus, 
whom  he  may  have  heard  on  the  streets  of 
Jerusalem — all  these  forces  were  leading  him 
to  his  momentous  decision.     Augustine  was 

converted  by  a  verse  in  the  New  Testament. 
4  37 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

Why?  Because  that  verse  appealed  to  some- 
thing within  his  soul,  to  a  system  of  thoughts 
and  feelings,  hopes  and  desires,  that  had  been 
slowly  organizing  there  and  now  awaited 
the  fit  word  to  arm  them  with  all-conquering 
energy.  The  same  fact  can  be  observed  to- 
day when  an  urgent  appeal  finds  quick  re- 
sponse in  the  heart  of  the  hearer;  the  mes- 
sage awakens  a  knowledge  of  good  long  dor- 
mant, secret  memories  and  associations  of 
childhood  submerged,  it  may  be,  under  years 
of  carelessness  and  folly,  but  now  meeting 
the  appointed  hour  of  resurrection. 

€|  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  enter  the 
new  life  through  a  long,  gradual  develop- 
ment of  the  life  of  righteousness  experience 
certain  critical  moments  where  a  decision  for 
the  good  stamps  the  character  with  spiritual 
qualities  more  swiftly  than  before.  Whether 
a  man  experiences  a  sudden  or  a  slow  con- 
version depends  on  his  temperament  and 
psychological  quality.  Those  in  whom  the 
emotional  and  the  suggestible  predominate, 
and  who  possess  a  rich,  subconscious  self, 
will  enter  into  peace  in  a  moment  through 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

relaxation  and  self-surrender,  while  those  who 
are  reflective  and  volitional  by  nature  need, 
perhaps,  years  of  striving  and  of  habit-form- 
ing before  they  win  the  secret  of  unity  and 
blessedness.  The  distinction  between  "once- 
born"  and  "twice-born"  Christians,  which 
James  borrows  from  Francis  Newman  and 
which  has  been  too  readily  accepted  by  stu- 
dents of  religion,  is  true  so  far  as  it  indicates 
the  difference  in  the  form  of  conversion,  but 
no  farther.  As  Augustine  says,  "We  are  not 
born  Christians,  but  we  become  Christians." 
In  other  words,  Christian  grace  is  not  a 
development  of  the  natural  man.  It  marks  the 
appearance  of  something  new,  and  this  new 
element  may  from  earliest  childhood  be 
wrought  into  the  texture  of  the  unconscious 
life. 

fl  Where  the  environment  is  favorable,  up* 
lifting  and  spiritualizing  influences  may  steal 
into  the  soul  and  build  it  up  in  beauty  and 
harmony.  It  argues  a  serious  misunderstand- 
ing to  suppose  that  men  like  Origen,  Zinzen- 
dorf,  Dean  Stanley,  Horace  Bushnell,  and 
Phillips  Brooks  never  felt  a  renewing  grace 

39 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

of  heaven.1  It  will  be  found  that  in  the  lives 
of  these  men,  and  of  others  like  them,  there 
are  periods  in  which  the  process  of  growth 
is  condensed,  as  it  were,  and  a  more  complete 
unification  of  the  inner  life  is  experienced. 

€[[  If  ever  there  was  a  man  who  did  not 
need  conversion  in  the  popular  sense,  surely 
it  was  John  Ruskin,  the  finest  flower  of  nine- 
teenth-century culture,  yet  he  it  is  who 
writes  as  follows:  "One  day  last  week  I  be- 
gan thinking  over  my  past  life,  and  what 
fruit  I  have  had,  and  the  joy  of  it  which  had 
passed  away,  and  of  the  hard  work  of  it, 
and  I  felt  nothing  but  discomfort,  for  I  saw 
that  I  had  been  always  working  for  myself 
in  one  way  or  another.  Then  I  thought  of 
my  investigations  of  the  Bible,  and  found  no 
comfort  in  that,  either.  This  was  about 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  So  I  considered 
that  I  had  now  neither  pleasure  in  looking  to 
my  past  life  nor  any  hope,  such  as  would  be 
my  comfort  on  a  sick-bed,  of  a  future  one, 

1  For  cases  of  different  forms  of  conversion  see — North, 
Human  Documents:  Lives  Rewritten  by  the  Holy  Spirit;  Begbie, 
Twice-Born  Men,  and  Souls  in  Action;  Jackson,  The  Fact  of 
Conversion. 

40 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

and  I  made  up  my  mind  that  this  would  never 
do.  So,  after  thinking,  I  resolved  that  at 
any  rate  I  would  act  as  if  the  Bible  were 
true — that  if  it  were  not  I  would  be,  at  all 
events,  no  worse  off  than  I  was  before;  that 
I  should  believe  in  Christ  and  take  Him  for 
my  Master  in  whatever  I  did;  that  to  disbe- 
lieve the  Bible  was  quite  as  difficult  as  to  be- 
lieve it;  and  when  I  had  done  this  I  fell 
asleep.  When  I  rose  in  the  morning,  though 
I  was  still  unwell,  I  felt  a  peace  and  spirit 
in  me  that  I  had  never  known  before." 

fl  It  is  this  type  of  conversion,  the  course 
of  which,  though  broken  by  moments  of 
solemn  consecration  or  resolve,  is,  on  the 
whole,  gradual,  that  requires  special  emphasis 
to-day.  It  makes  a  convincing  appeal  to 
the  vast  majority  of  educated  persons,  to 
whom  the  violent  upheavals  and  convulsive 
agonies  of  the  spontaneous  type  contain 
something  repellant.  These  persons  are  un- 
der the  influence  of  the  time-spirit,  they 
have  some  tincture  of  science,  they  have 
been  profoundly  impressed  by  the  doctrine 
of  evolution.  Moreover,  they  have  cherished 
41 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

moral  ideas;  they  believe  in  loyalty,  in  honor, 
in  honest  dealing  with  their  fellows,  and  they 
are  not,  for  the  most  part,  without  a  measure 
of  faith  in  a  power,  personal  or  impersonal, 
that  governs  the  world.  Hence,  if  the  new 
life  is  ever  to  become  theirs,  it  will  not  be 
by  a  sudden  overthrow  of  their  usual  ways  of 
thinking  and  acting,  but  by  a  gradual  ap- 
propriation of  new  motives  which  can  enter 
into  vital  union  with  the  moral  and  intellect- 
ual habits  already  existing.  The  precise 
point  at  which  the  ethical  passes  over  into 
the  distinctively  spiritual  is  hidden  from  the 
utmost  scrutiny,  as  indeed  are  all  vital  be- 
ginnings. The  transition  is  gradual  and  need 
not  be  marked  by  any  mental  struggle  or 
frenzied  agony  of  soul.  "When  I  was  a  child, 
I  spoke  as  a  child,  I  felt  as  a  child,  I  thought 
as  a  child;  now  that  I  am  become  a  man  I 
have  put  away  childish  things."  * 

€[|  Now  in  this  passage  from  childhood  to 
manhood,  the  most  significant  that  can  be 
experienced  on  this  earth,  there  is  no  con- 
vulsion, no  abrupt  wrench;  on  the  contrary, 

1 1  Cor.  xiii :  11. 

M 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

all  is  slow,  each  stage  gradually  melting  into 
the  next,  like  the  great  organic  processes  of 
nature.  Why,  then,  cannot  a  man  break 
with  his  spiritual  past  after  the  same  fashion? 
What  is  there  to  prevent  him  from  calmly 
and  quietly  reaching  out  after  that  for  which 
his  nature  craves,  without  which,  indeed,  it 
remains  a  fragment,  an  incomplete  and, 
therefore,  unfulfilled  phenomenon?  From 
this  point  of  view  the  new  life  offers  itself  as 
the  creation  and  interpretation  of  the  higher 
elements  in  human  nature.  This  truth  is 
obscured  very  often  by  an  irrational  in- 
sistence on  belief  in  abstruse  theological 
doctrine  as  a  necessary  qualification  for 
entrance  into  the  higher  experiences  of  the 
spirit. 

€][  These  doctrines,  however,  are  valueless 
if  accepted  in  a  dead,  impassive  manner, 
but  they  cannot  be  accepted  otherwise  unless 
through  an  experience  which  is  not  yet 
present.  Devotion  to  the  highest  which  the 
soul  is  able  at  a  given  moment  to  grasp  is  the 
best  preparation  for  advance,  not  a  knowledge 

of  principles  and  truths  that  as  yet  speak  no 
43 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

clear  and  compelling  message  to  the  mind. 
Let  a  man  begin  with  what  measure  of  trust 
he  has,  let  him  be  loyal  to  his  convictions 
which  he  has  tested  and  found  to  be  solid, 
and  he  will  be  in  a  position  from  which  he 
can  progress  to  other  convictions,  not  me- 
chanically adding  one  truth  or  one  idea  to 
another,  but  living  through  all  truth  as  he  is 
able  to  apprehend  it. 

€fl  There  is  still  a  third  spiritual  type  which 
needs  conversion.  It  is  very  striking  that 
Christ  addresses  Himself  primarily  not  to  the 
vicious  and  outcast  classes,  but  to  the  con- 
ventionally "good,"  the  pillars  of  society, 
the  champions  of  law  and  order,  men  who  had 
taken  to  themselves  the  whole  armor  of  re- 
ligiosity and  stood  clothed  in  all  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  of  a  spotless  reputation 
and  a  cast-iron  orthodoxy.  It  is  a  hard 
saying,  too  hard  for  many  in  our  day  to 
accept,  yet  here  as  elsewhere  the  Master 
rises  above  our  artificial  categories  and  pro- 
claims the  necessity  of  conversion  for  men 
who  deem  themselves,  and  are  deemed  by 

others,  profoundly  religious  because  they  ab- 

44 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

stain  from  the  sins  which  the  ordinary  con- 
science condemns  and  have  a  real  zeal  for 
religion.  This  does  not  mean  that  these 
persons  put  on  the  appearance  of  religion  in 
order  to  deceive  their  fellows;  on  the  con- 
trary, they  are  profound  believers  in  their 
religion.  But  it  means  that  their  religion 
is  hollow,  for  it  releases  no  fountains  of  en- 
thusiasm; it  does  not  act  as  a  moral  dynamic 
constraining  the  will  and  fusing  the  whole 
man  in  an  ethical  passion.  It  is,  therefore, 
not  to  a  Zaccheus  or  a  Magdalene,  but  to  a 
Nicodemus,  a  member  of  the  highest  religious 
caste,  that  Christ  is  represented  as  saying, 
"Ye  must  be  born  again." 

tfl  The  elder  brother  in  the  parable  was  as 
much  in  need  of  a  change  of  heart  as  the 
wastrel  who  had  spent  his  all  in  a  far  country. 
Why  is  it  that  the  conventionally  "good" 
need  to  take  their  place  with  the  publican 
and  the  sinner?  Because  both  are  suffering 
in  different  ways  from  the  same  malady, 
both  are  in  wrong  relations  with  God;  the 
one  openly  flouts  His  will,  the  other  formally 
obeys  it,  but  from  wrong  motives  and  without 

45 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

the  feeling  which  gives  obedience  its  moral 
worth.  "To  be  a  son  of  God,"  says  F.  W. 
Robertson,  "is  one  thing,  to  know  the  fact 
is  another — and  that  is  regeneration."  The 
tragedy  alike  of  the  open  sinner  and  the 
conventionally  "good"  man  is  that  neither 
knows  this  fact. 

Ifl  Is  man,  then,  wholly  passive  in  the  regen- 
eration of  character,  as  clay  in  the  hands  of 
a  potter?  Must  he  wait  until  a  higher  power 
is  pleased  to  lay  hold  of  him?  These  ques- 
tions answer  themselves.  If  man  is  responsi- 
ble for  his  sin,  he  is  also  responsible  for  turn- 
ing from  it  and  seeking  the  new  life.  God, 
it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  is  not  a 
magician  ignoring  the  laws  that  rule  in  the 
spiritual  world.  The  work  of  renewing  char- 
acter implies  the  co-operation  of  the  divine 
and  the  human.  Our  life  is  so  regulated  that 
suggestions  of  good  are  constantly  offered 
us.  These  suggestions,  however,  if  neglected, 
become  weaker  and  weaker  and  finally  cease 
to  exercise  any  power  over  us,  but  if  we 
accept  them  and  realize  them  in  conduct, 
they  become  the  dominant  motives  of  our 
46 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

lives.  There  are  memories  that  well  up  from 
the  subconscious,  memories  that  rebuke  us 
for  our  disloyalty  or  that  urge  us  to  a  deci- 
sion on  the  side  of  what  is  right. 

<|  Faust,  intent  on  suicide,  hears  the  music 
of  the  Easter  bells  recalling  the  faith  of  his 
boyhood,  and  stays  his  hand.  We  cannot 
walk  abroad  without  something  striking  the 
eye  or  the  ear  which  summons  us  to  a  better 
mind.  It  is  here  that  the  law  of  attention 
operates.  We  can  attend  to  the  suggestion 
that  is  offered  us  and,  if  the  suggestion  is  a 
good  one,  it  will  summon  to  its  assistance 
all  the  good  elements  of  the  subconscious  life 
and  thereby  capture  the  will  and  realize  itself 
in  action.  Moreover,  the  commonplace  rou- 
tine of  every  life  is  broken  at  intervals  by 
critical  epochs  involving  a  profound  upheaval 
of  the  emotional  life.  The  wounding  of  the 
affections,  the  awakening  of  conscience  to  the 
horror  of  some  self-indulgence,  the  revelation 
of  a  majestic  truth  claiming  the  allegiance 
of  intellect  and  heart,  the  manifest  working  of 
divine  judgments  in  public  events  that  fill 
the  hearts  of  men  with  perplexity  and  fear — 
47 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

such  are  some  of  the  incitements  that  urge 
life  on  to  finer  issues.    They  speak  of 

...  a  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men 
Which,  taken  at  the  flood,  leads  on  to  fortune. 

fj  It  is  at  such  moments  that  we  will  do 
well  to  betake  ourselves  to  some  natural  soli- 
tude where,  undistracted  by  the  trivialities 
of  the  hour,  we  can  come  to  terms  with  our- 
selves and  with  God  who  is  thus  breaking 
silence  with  us.  Prayer  and  meditation,  and 
self-surrender,  the  putting  forth  of  our  will 
to  make  ourselves  over  in  thought  and  action 
to  the  guidance  of  the  Divine  Will — such  is 
our  part  in  the  creation  of  the  new  life.  We 
cannot,  indeed,  command  the  great  experi- 
ence, but  we  can  supply  the  conditions  on 
which  the  experience  will  inevitably  be  ours. 
If,  as  all  the  higher  thought  of  our  time 
assures  us,  our  real  environment  is  God, 
what  but  our  own  indifference,  or  blindness, 
or  waywardness  prevents  the  continuous  un- 
folding of  the  Divine  in  our  lives?1 

1  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  human  factor  in  the  new 
life  the  reader  is  referred  to  Faith,  the  Greatest  Power  in  the 
World. 

48 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

(J  Whence  comes  the  impulse  to  repent, 
the  self-loathing  that  is  sometimes  intoler- 
able? From  what  secret  spring  wells  up  the 
unexpected  prayer  for  help?  What  means 
this  releasing  of  sealed  fountains  within  us, 
setting  free  an  energy  to  which  we  have  but 
to  surrender  our  wills  in  order  to  be  carried, 
as  we  say,  beyond  ourselves  into  realms  of 
undreamed-of  achievement?  The  psycholo- 
gist replies,  "These  things  are  to  be  explained 
through  the  action  of  subconscious  factors, 
forces  waiting  beneath  the  surface  of  our 
normal  life  for  some  stimulus  from  without 
in  order  to  break  out  into  consciousness." 
But  this  answer,  while  valuable  as  throwing 
light  upon  the  mechanism  by  which  the  good 
effect  is  produced,  does  not  account  for  the 
effect  itself. 

fl  The  only  satisfying  and  ultimate  ex- 
planation must  be  that  man  is  open  on  all 
sides  of  his  being,  conscious  and  subconscious, 
to  the  inrush  of  spiritual  forces  which,  in  the 
last  analysis,  resolve  themselves  into  one 
Supreme  Force.  But  not  even  this  Force 
can  carry  our  wills  by  storm.   It  can  prompt 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

us  to  cast  away  some  cherished  sin,  or  create 
the  aspiration  to  acquire  some  good  habit, 
or  start  the  impulse  tc  carry  out  a  hard,  dis- 
tasteful duty.  These  uprisings  within  us  we 
do  not,  ourselves,  deliberately  will;  they 
come  we  know  not  how  or  whence.  It  is 
ours  not  to  explain  them  away  as  empty 
dreams  or  Utopian  fancies,  but  to  interpret 
them  as  suggestions  offered  us  from  the  all- 
encompassing  Spirit,  and  at  once  set  about 
the  work  of  carrying  them  out  in  action.  And 
our  interpretation  will  prove  its  truth  in  the 
only  way  in  which  it  can  be  proved,  by  the 
experience  of  freedom  and  expansion  and  a 
more  abundant  life  which  inevitably  results. 
€][  Of  all  the  divine  suggestions  which  rise 
within  the  mind  none  is  more  fraught  with 
spiritual  consequence  than  that  which  in- 
spires the  penitent  mood.  For,  conceived 
aright,  repentance1  is  the  root  virtue  of  the 
soul;  with  it  all  things  are  possible,  without 
it  nothing  worth  doing  can  be  attempted. 

1  For  a  brilliant  exposition  of  the  New  Testament  idea  of 
repentance  the  reader  is  referred  to  T.  Walden's  "The  Great 
Meaning  of  the  Word  Metanoia" 
50 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

The  word  itself  has  had  an  unhappy  history. 
It  bears  on  its  front  the  marks  of  a  Latinized 
theology  and  puts  the  psychological  emphasis 
in  the  wrong  place.  It  speaks  of  sorrow, 
pain,  punishment,  of  emotional  disturbance, 
of  regret  for  what  might  have  been.  It  is 
negative  rather  than  positive;  its  glance  is 
backward,  not  forward.  But  let  us  baptize 
the  word  into  the  higher  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity and  then  it  means  a  change  of  thought 
and  will,  or,  as  people  persistently  separate 
thought  and  will  from  the  subject  who  thinks 
and  wills,  one  must  say  it  is  a  change  abso- 
lute and  complete  of  the  living  self. 

fl  The  man  who  repents  is  the  man  who 
feels  and  knows  by  a  deep  intuition  that  un- 
der no  conceivable  circumstance  could  he  be 
what  he  once  was,  or  do  again  what  he  once 
did.  He  renounces  the  false  shows  of  his 
weaker  self,  and,  asserting  the  reality  of  his 
better  self,  he  identifies  himself  with  it  in 
the  inmost  spirit  of  his  being.  This  act  of 
the  will,  springing  out  of  his  changed  thought 
about  himself  and  the  world,  marks  the 
greatest  crisis  in  his  life,  for  it  contains  im- 

51 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

plicitly  all  that  is  afterward  to  be  achieved 
and  manifested.  Though  he  has  not  yet 
brought  forth  "fruits  fit  for  repentance,"  his 
victory  over  himself  and  over  all  the  evil 
forces  that  threaten  his  spiritual  destiny  is 
in  his  grasp.  The  very  moment  that  marks 
his  deepest  humiliation  and  despair  is  also 
by  a  strange  and  divine  paradox  a  moment 
when 

He  stands  on  the  heights  of  his  life  with  a  glimpse 
of  a  height  that  is  higher. 

He  realizes  the  saying,  "death  is  the  gate 
of  life";  in  mystical  phrase  he  has  been 
"crucified";  but  from  his  spiritual  death  he 
has  won  a  new  life,  creative,  triumphant,  in- 
spiring, having  within  itself  the  promise  and 
potency  of  all  good. 


VIII 

THE    POWER    OF    THE    NEW    LIFE 

WHEN  a  man  becomes  conscious  that 
he  has  entered  on  the  new  life  he  re- 
alizes a  new  world.  This  sense  of  newness  is 
especially  intense  in  those  who  have  made  a 
dramatic  and  abrupt  breach  with  the  past. 
Life  is  now  organized  around  a  new  center, 
and  even  the  external  world  seems  clad  with 
a  super-earthly  beauty.  The  most  common- 
place things  and  persons  now  bear  gracious 
messages  to  the  soul.  John  Masefield's  hero 
in  his  poem  "The  Everlasting  Mercy"  passes 
at  a  bound  from  the  shame  and  degradation 
of  a  drunkard  and  a  thief  to  a  complete  spir- 
itual emancipation,  and  it  is  then  that  he 
feels  as  though  scales  had  fallen  from  his  eyes. 

Oh  glory  of  the  lighted  mind! 
How  dead  I'd  been,  how  drunk,  how  blind, 
5  53 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

The  station  brook,  to  my  new  eyes, 
Was  babbling  out  of  Paradise, 
The  waters  rushing  from  the  rain 
Were  singing,  "Christ  is  risen  again." 
I  thought  all  earthly  creatures  knelt 
From  rapture  and  the  joy  I  felt. 
The  narrow  station-wall's  brick  ledge, 
The  wild  hop  withering  on  the  ledge, 
The  lights  in  huntsman's  upper  story 
Were  parts  of  an  eternal  glory 
Where  God's  eternal  Garden  flowers — 
I  stood  in  bliss  in  this  for  hours. 

C|  The  psychologist  explains  this  sense  of 
newness  by  the  theory  that  the  psychic  tur- 
moil experienced  in  conversion  has  a  corre- 
sponding physiological  commotion  involving 
a  new  distribution  of  the  nervous  energy. 
This  may  partly  explain  the  results  of  a  con- 
version crisis,  but  the  fact  is  that  the  new 
view  of  nature  and  man  comes  to  some  whose 
change  has  involved  little  or  no  psychic 
tension.  The  man  who  quickly,  in  some 
moment  of  reflection,  makes  up  his  mind 
that  henceforth  God's  will  is  to  be  his  will, 
that  he  is  done  with  self  pleasing  and  is  now 
committed  irrevocably  to  the  attainment  of 

54 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

personal  righteousness,  also  feels  that  for  him 
the  world  is  a  new  place. 

€][  The  trees  and  flowers,  the  living  creat- 
ures that  fill  the  woodland  with  their  joy, 
all  speak  to  him  some  word  of  God.  The 
world  is  new  because  the  man  himself  is  new; 
a  life  which  seems  to  him  quite  apart  from 
his  preceding  life  rises  within  him;  the  heart 
is  lighter;  the  senses  are  keener;  the  intel- 
lectual powers  awake  to  new  energy;  it  is 
as  though  the  psychic  organism  had  been 
bathed  in  some  cleansing  and  renewing  tide. 
The  disquietude  and  the  discontent  of  the 
past  have  vanished  as  by  magic.  In  their 
places  new  emotion,  new  desires,  new  ambi- 
tions rise  spontaneously.  "Old  things  have 
passed  away;  all  things  have  become  new." 

(J  Along  with  this  sense  of  renovation 
arises,  as  an  unvarying  accompaniment,  a 
sense  of  power;  the  whole  area  of  conscious- 
ness is  flooded  with  a  feeling  of  potency  and 
an  energy  that  stands  ready  for  any  task. 
The  new  man  understands  Paul  when  he 
says,  "I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ 
which  strengthened  me."     The  great  dif- 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

ference  between  one  man  and  another  as  an 
efficient  factor  in  the  world's  life  depends  on 
the  possession  of  reserve  power.  The  man 
who  is  not  in  contact  with  any  source  of 
energy  greater  than  himself  is  often  afraid, 
and  this  fear  causes  him  to  shrink  before  a 
critical  test.  He  is  "a  self -inhibited  man." 
But  the  man,  the  psychical  depths  of  whose 
nature  are  undergirded  by  a  boundless  spir- 
itual force,  at  once  is  conscious  that  the 
energy  which  had  been  dammed  up  is  now 
set  free  and  is  ready  to  be  transformed  into 
work.  The  psychic  functions  are  harmonized 
and  invigorated.  He  taps  new  reservoirs  of 
power;  he  goes  from  strength  to  strength; 
he  achieves  a  unified,  a  consecrated  person- 
ality. 

€][  Old  ideas  of  God — the  soul,  sin,  good- 
ness, human  life — are  invested  with  a  new 
"feeling- tone";  they  are  clothed  as  with  a 
freshness  and  force  of  a  revelation  from  some 
super-earthly  sphere.  The  emotions,  now 
deeply  stirred,  reinforce  the  will,  which  in 
turn  sweeps  away  ancient  hindrances  and  sets 
about  the  work  of  spiritual  reconstruction. 

56 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

Thus  a  new  character  is  generated,  the  man 
is  possessed  with  an  enthusiasm  for  personal 
righteousness.  ("No  heart  is  pure  that  is  not 
passionate;  no  virtue  is  safe  that  is  not 
enthusiastic."  It  *s>  therefore,  in  the  trans- 
formation of  the  feelings  that  one  of  the  great 
sources  of  ethical  power  is  to  be  found.  For 
now  old  habits  loose  their  grip  on  the  mind, 
and  new  habits  are  acquired.  There  are 
some  whose  intellects  are  won  to  the  service 
of  the  Ideal,  but  whose  hearts  remain  un- 
touched. This  was  the  case  for  a  time  with 
the  famous  Scottish  divine,  Thomas  Chal- 
mers. Such  persons  live,  it  may  be  for  years, 
in  a  state  of  unstable  equilibrium,  but  sooner 
or  later  the  divided  self  is  fused  into  unity. 
The  man  is  no  longer  an  echo  of  other  men's 
thoughts,  but  speaks  out  of  the  depths  of  a 
vital  experience.  His  words  thrill  with  life 
and  produce  conviction,  for  now  the  soul 
speaks  to  the  soul,  "deeps  are  calling  unto 
deeps." 

fl  It  is  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  if 
the  original  impulses  die  out  before  the  new 
system  of  ideas  and  motives  has  beeu  thor- 

57 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

oughly  organized  and  expressed  in  forms  of 
new  ways  of  thinking  and  acting,  there  is 
danger  of  a  relapse.  But  when  through 
prayer  and  meditation  and  deliberate  resolve, 
and  holding  the  ideal  persistently  before  the 
eye  of  imagination,  the  new-born  desires  are 
kept  alive  until  the  foundations  of  the  spir- 
itual structure  have  been  laid,  the  chances  of 
a  relapse  are  small,  and  with  a  passage  of 
time  grow  smaller.  The  very  fear  of  back- 
sliding, which  some  experience  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  new  life,  is  an  unconscious  reflex 
of  defense  against  it. 

Ifl  One  of  the  saddest  illusions  to  which 
men  are  prone  is  the  notion  that  some  high 
emotion,  some  mystic  experience,  can  take 
the  place  of  moral  achievement.  It  is  a 
famous  saying  of  Immanuel  Kant  that  "there 
is  nothing  absolutely  good  except  a  good 
will;"  but  a  good  will  is  not  something 
ready-made,  it  is  the  result  of  long-contin- 
ued efforts  crystallizing  in  spiritual  habits. 
Hence,  the  new  man,  if  he  is  wise,  will  seek 
help  in  the  creation  of  specific  forms  of  con- 
duct.    He  will  listen  to  the  psychologist  as 

58 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

he  discourses  on  the  rules  by  which  one  ac- 
quires a  habit;  he  will  study  the  biographies 
of  good  men;  he  will  take  advice  from  those 
who  have  been  longer  on  the  upward  path 
than  himself,  and  in  whom  he  sees  some  re- 
flection of  the  Ideal;  he  will  remember  that 
our  real  life  is  our  thought  life  and,  therefore, 
he  will  fill  the  mind  with  thoughts  which 
build  up,  strengthen,  and  unify;  he  will 
learn  in  due  time  that  the  greatest  unifying 
forces  are  not  ideas,  but  personalities.  "Ideas 
are  often  poor  ghosts;  our  sun-filled  eyes 
cannot  behold  them;  they  pass  athwart  us 
in  thin  vapor  and  cannot  make  themselves 
felt.  But  sometimes  they  are  made  flesh  .  .  . 
then  their  presence  is  a  power;  they  shake 
us  like  a  passion,  and  we  are  drawn  with 
them  with  gentle  compulsion  as  flame  is 
drawn  to  flame."  * 

1  George  Eliot,  Janet's  Repentance, 


IX 

THE    CHRIST    IDEAL 

A  MONG  the  great  personalities  of  history 
-ZjLwho  is  greater  than  Jesus  of  Nazareth? 
As  it  is  through  Him  we  gain  our  highest 
knowledge  of  God,  so  is  it  in  imitation  of  Him 
that  we  take  on  new  virtues  and  a  nobler 
habit  of  life.  Nor  need  we  wait  until  we  have 
solved  the  problem  of  His  nature;  He  Him- 
self will  disclose  His  secret  to  the  loyal  soul. 
It  is  enough  at  the  present  stage  of  our  ex- 
perience that  in  Him  we  see  in  perfect  form 
all  that  we  wish  to  be.  One  of  the  great 
sources  of  weakness  in  the  modern  religious 
life  is  the  tendency  to  rest  content  with  the 
traditional  picture  of  Christ's  character.  We 
need  to  visualize  Him,  not  as  He  appears  in 
tradition,  but  as  He  really  lived  on  this 
earth.    Of  "lives  of  Jesus"  there  are  many; 

60 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

of  vivid,  vital,  and  vitalizing  portraitures  of 
His  spiritual  personality  there  are  few.  But  in 
any  case  one  must  visualize  Him  for  oneself. 
I]|  Do  you  say:  "How  difficult,  if  not  im- 
possible! Time  and  space  are  insurmountable 
barriers"?  I  reply,  "Time  and  space  have 
nothing  to  do  with  spiritual  qualities."  Let 
me  suppose  that  I  correspond  with  some  one 
at  the  other  end  of  the  world,  some  one  whom 
I  have  never  seen  in  the  flesh,  and  a  photo- 
graph of  whom  I  have  never  seen.  I  write  to 
him  and  he  writes  to  me  about  the  most  im- 
portant things  of  life,  art,  religion,  love,  the 
moral  and  social  questions  of  the  day.  As 
he  opens  up  his  mind  to  me,  is  it  not  clear 
that  I  can  visualize  the  main  features  of  his 
character?  I  may  be  quite  ignorant  of  his 
physical  characteristics,  whether  tall  or  short, 
dark  or  fair;  I  may  know  little  or  nothing  of 
his  material  surroundings,  but  all  this  does 
not  prevent  me  from  enjoying  a  clear  image 
of  my  correspondent  as  a  spiritual  personal- 
ity. We  can  visualize  Christ  if  we  sit  down 
before  the  Gospel  records,  and,  setting  aside 

for  the  moment  whatever  in  them  does  not 
01 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

find  us,  allow  the  rest  to  work  its  influence 
on  our  minds  and  hearts  until  its  inner  mean- 
ing takes  hold  of  us,  and  there  will  rise  before 
us  a  clearly  outlined  figure. 

The  idea  of  His  life  shall  sweetly  creep 

Into  the  study  of  imagination, 

And  every  lovely  organ  of  His  life 

Shall  come  appareled  in  more  precious  habit, 

More  moving,  delicate  and  full  of  life, 

Into  the  eye  and  prospect  of  the  soul, 

Than  when  He  lived  indeed.1 

fj  It  is  the  harmony  and  balance  of  op- 
posed qualities  that  make  Christ  at  once  the 
attraction  and  the  despair  of  the  aspiring 
soul.  "In  Christ,"  says  Pascal,  "all  contra- 
dictions are  reconciled."  The  traditional 
picture  of  Him  which  overemphasizes  the 
passive  virtues — gentleness,  forbearance,  self- 
sacrifice — have  taken  not  too  high,  but  too 
exclusive  a  place  in  the  Christian  ideal.  The 
more  deeply  the  Gospels  are  studied  the  more 
certain  does  it  become  that  in  Him  like  a 
twin  star  that  shines  with  a  single  light, 
strength  blends  with  gentleness,  heroic  cour- 
age, self-reliance  in  decision  and  action  of 

1  Shakespeare,  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing"  Act  iv,  sc.  I. 
02 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

ideal  manhood  is  crowned  with  the  grace  and 
tenderness  of  ideal  womanhood. 

fl  A  Chinese  statesman  coming  to  the 
Gospel  history  with  a  perfectly  open  mind 
has  left  on  record  the  impressions  which 
it  makes  on  him.  "I  asked  K'ang  Yu  Wei," 
writes  an  interviewer,  "what  seemed  to  him 
the  most  striking  quality  in  Jesus.  He 
answered,  somewhat  to  my  surprise,  that 
what  appealed  to  him  most  in  the  personality 
of  Jesus  was  his  courage — the  manliness  which 
could  so  quietly  and  dauntlessly  face  the 
hatred  of  so  many  of  his  countrymen,  the 
fierce  enmity  of  the  proud  Pharisees,  and, 
above  all,  the  certainty  of  death  and  of  the 
outward  failure  of  His  mission/'1  And, 
strangely  enough,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  gives 
a  similar  judgment  in  his  recent  exposition  of 
Christianity,  in  which  he  denounces  the  cur- 
rent conception  of  "gentle  Jesus  meek  and 
mild,"  and  the  theory  that  such  a  figure  could 
ever  have  become  a  center  of  the  world's 
attention, as  "too  absurd  for  discussion."2 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  October,  1908,  p.  22. 

2  Androcles  and  the  Lion,  p.  17. 

m 


THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  VALUE   OF  THE  NEW  LIFE 

TO-DAY,  in  the  midst  of  a  catastrophe 
that  threatens  to  dissolve  all  European 
civilization,  men  are  turning  anew  to  the 
Gospels  to  ask,  Was  Jesus  a  pacifist?  It  is 
not  unlike  another  question  much  discussed  at 
the  present  time — Was  Jesus  a  socialist?  To 
which  one  must  reply,  "Yes,  and  more  than 
a  socialist."  So  we  may  say  that  Jesus  was 
a  pacifist  and  more  than  a  pacifist.  His 
pacifism  was  as  different  from  that  of  the 
modern  sentiment  which  goes  by  the  same 
name  as  was  His  socialism  from  that  of  Mr. 
G.  B.  Shaw  and  the  Fabian  Society.  His 
patience  with  evil  was  rooted  in  His  faith  in 
the  supernatural  might  of  God.  The  worst 
ill  that  could  befall  man,  in  His  view,  is  not 

pain?  nor  distress,  nor  even  death;    it  is  a 
M 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

state  of  permanent  unrighteousness.  And  He 
did  not  hesitate  to  tell  the  men  of  His  day 
that  a  false  patriotism  must  inevitably  end 
in  national  downfall.  "Except  ye  repent,  ye 
shall  all  likewise  perish."  His  word  was  ful- 
filled in  the  war  that  laid  Jerusalem  in  ruins. 

CJ  He  is  courageous  in  the  presence  of  the 
men  who  opposed  the  advance  of  the  Divine 
Kingdom;  but  He  is  tender  when  He  speaks 
to  the  weary  and  the  heavy-laden.  His  self- 
reliance  and  independence  go  hand  in  hand 
with  utter  and  absolute  self -surrender  to  His 
God. 

C|  In  the  critical  moments  in  His  career 
no  man  gives  to  Him,  but  out  of  His  spiritual 
wealth  He  gives  to  every  man  according  to 
his  need.  Yet  His  works  are  wrought  in 
prayer,  the  language  of  dependence.  He  is  as 
a  rock  against  the  evil  passions  of  His  ene- 
mies and  the  no  less  dangerous  softness  of 
His  friends;  yet  in  Gethsemane  before  His 
God  he  trembles  and  utters  the  word  that  has 
upheld  many  a  distressed  spirit  since:  "Not 
my  will  but  Thine  be  done."  He  is  serious, 
but  He  is  not  sad;  serious  because  human  life 

05 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

is  lived  overshadowed  with  the  possibility  of 
infinite  loss,  not  sad  because  God  is  in  His 
world  and  is  working  out  His  glorious  pur- 
pose. He  achieves  the  paradox  of  ceaseless 
activity  and  quiet  trust,  an  inner  calm  united 
to  a  mighty  forthputting  of  energy.  To 
borrow  an  illustration  from  Professor  Hock- 
ing's discussion  of  mysticism,  in  the  life  of 
Christ  We  find  commingled  activity  and 
pacifity  at  their  highest  point  "like  the  mo- 
tionlessness  of  a  rapid  wheel  or  the  ease  and 
silence  of  light." 

(J  We  speak  of  a  man  having  the  defects 
of  his  qualities,  but  we  do  not  so  speak  of 
Christ,  for  in  Him  there  is  a  sweet  reason- 
ableness, a  spiritual  sanity  which  permeates 
all  His  being  and  endows  His  career  with  a 
unity,  a  harmony,  a  grace  producing  on  the 
beholder  an  effect  comparable  to  that  made 
by  a  noble  work  of  art.  As  has  been  well 
said:  "it  is  owing  to  the  all-pervading  pres- 
ence of  this  subtle  virtue  that  in  Christ  alone 
among  men,  we  have  faith  without  dogma- 
tism, enthusiasm  without  fanaticism,  strength 

without  violence,  idealism  without  visionari- 
es 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

ness,  naturalness  without  materialism,  free- 
dom without  license,  self-sacrifice  without 
asceticism,  purity  without  austerity,  saint- 
liness  without  morbidity,  a  light  which  was 
too  strong  to  dazzle,  a  fire  which  was  too 
intense  to  flame.  The  inward  harmony  of 
His  nature  was,  in  fine,  perfect:  the  various 
tendencies  held  one  another  in  check,  and  yet 
all  energized  freely,  happily,  and  fully."  * 

€|  Jesus  lived  the  Gospel  that  He  preached. 
He  did  not  know  from  the  outset  of  His 
career  that  the  cross  was  to  be  His  fate; 
such  knowledge  would  have  made  a  real 
human  development  impossible.  He  lived 
from  day  to  day  in  sublime  trust  in  His 
Father,  and  left  to  the  morrow  the  anxieties 
that  belonged  to  it.  He  trusted  in  God  and 
He  loved  men,  and  this  trust  and  love  formed 
an  "indivisible  unity."  But  a  virtue  is  not 
a  virtue  until  it  becomes  a  habit.  Not  even 
Christ  could  escape  the  working  of  this  law. 
A  New  Testament  writer  says  that  He  was 
made  perfect  in  sympathy  with  suffering,  by 
enduring  the  sorrows  and  temptations  of  our 

1  The  Creed  of  Christ,  p.  205. 
67 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

human  lot.  Each  day  brought  Him  new 
experiences  of  pain  and  disappointment,  of 
the  failure  of  hope  and  the  sadness  of  unre- 
quited devotion;  but  were  not  they  the  mate- 
rials which  the  great  Master  builder  had  given 
Him  out  of  which  to  shape  and  finish  the 
work  appointed  to  Him?  By  allowing  the 
image  of  Christ  to  occupy  the  mind  and  fill 
the  imagination  we  reap  the  benefit  of  the 
great  psychological  law  which  asserts  that 
we  become  like  that  which  we  most  ad- 
mire, and  are  gradually  conformed  to  the 
ideal  in  which  we  have  set  our  hearts. 

fj  But  the  new  character — the  putting  on 
of  Christ,  to  use  Paul's  realistic  phrase — is 
developed,  not  in  solitude,  but  amid  the 
stress  and  strain  of  a  world  where  evil,  greed, 
cruelty,  and  injustice  abound  and  are  in- 
trenched behind  ancient  customs  and  insti- 
tutions, where  men  and  women  are  the  vic- 
tims of  organic  and  corporate  corruption. 
The  new  man  is  in  a  state  of  chronic  revolt 
against  his  sinful  environment;  hence  he  is 
pledged  to  the  cause  of  social  righteous- 
ness. 

68 


THE    NEW    LIFE 

€]J  This,  indeed,  is  part  of  the  "unselfing" 
process  which  is  salvation.  He  loses  himself 
in  the  needs  and  miseries  of  others  only  to 
find  himself  in  a  new  and  grander  guise.  As 
he  looks  out  upon  the  world  of  organized  evil 
with  all  its  physical  and  moral  suffering,  he 
is  seized  with  the  ambition  to  "shatter  it  to 
bits"  and  to  remold  it  nearer  to  the  Christ- 
like desires  that  now  possess  him,  and  this 
quite  independently  of  any  political  or  social 
doctrine  he  may  espouse.  His  instincts  may 
lead  him  to  be  a  Tolstoian  anarchist,  or  an 
uncompromising  conservative,  or  a  conven- 
tionally average  person  traveling  the  beaten 
path.  He  may  be  an  individualist  or  a  so- 
cialist, a  friend  of  capital  or  a  champion  of 
labor,  but  his  sympathies  with  this  or  that 
economic  doctrine  do  not  restrain  him  from 
protesting  against  organized  evil,  wherever 
he  finds  it,  and  from  working  with  might  and 
main  for  its  annihilation. 

IJ  Nor  is  he  content  with  the  general  de- 
nunciation of  social  ills.  He  selects  concrete 
examples  and  makes  them  the  object  of  his 
relentless  antagonism.    Hence  the  new  man 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

is  a  dangerous  man — dangerous  to  the  estab- 
lished order  in  so  far  as  it  has  become  the 
minister  of  evil.  Should  he  enter  political 
life,  he  unveils  and  holds  up  to  public  con- 
demnation the  graft,  the  self-seeking  and 
materialistic  aims  that  everywhere  are  mani- 
fest. Or  perhaps  the  curse  of  the  liquor 
traffic  is  brought  home  to  him,  and  he  finds 
no  peace  until  the  general  conscience  is 
aroused  and  a  remedy  discovered.  Or  it 
may  be  public  amusements  and  recreations, 
which  pander  to  the  lower  instincts,  espe- 
cially stir  his  moral  indignation,  and  he  goes 
forth  to  fight  the  battle  of  purity  and  ideal- 
ism against  the  vested  interests.  Or  the 
patience  of  the  poor  lays  its  spell  upon  him 
and  he  gives  himself  to  grappling  with  the 
causes  of  poverty  and  to  bringing  relief  and 
alleviation,  while  working  for  the  coming  of 
the  new  day  of  larger  opportunity  and  the 
reign  of  brotherhood. 


XI 

THE    NEW    LIFE    ATONING    AND    OPTIMISTIC 

THE  new  man  is  pledged  by  his  vision 
of  Christ  to  the  cause  of  social  reform. 
All  the  great  mystics  were  the  social  regene- 
rators of  their  time,  and  to-day  much  of 
the  fussiness  and  shallowness  of  social  effort 
rises  from  the  absence  of  the  mystical  motive. 
The  new  man  is  constrained  to  undertake 
some  form  of  social  service  because  of  the 
nature  of  the  new  life  that  is  welling  up  within 
him.  In  him  God  now  lives  and  energizes 
through  him  in  a  way  in  which  he  did  not 
live  or  energize  before.  But  God's  life  is  an 
atoning  life:  He  bears  vicariously  the  sins 
and  sufferings,  the  wrongs  and  shames,  of  the 
world.  "In  all  their  affliction  He  is  afflicted."1 
And  as  He  bears  them  He  is  working  mightily 

1  Isaiah,  lxiii  :  9. 
71 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

to  abolish  them.  So,  too,  with  the  man  who 
has  become  a  partaker  of  the  divine  nature. 
He  feels  the  degradation  of  the  drunkard, 
the  slavery  of  the  morphinist,  the  agony  of 
the  remorseful,  the  misery  of  the  outcast. 
The  strokes  that  fall  on  them  fall  also  on 
him;  he  goes  down  into  any  hell  of  pain 
which  their  sin  and  folly  has  made,  and  to 
them  he  brings  relief  at  whatever  sacrifice 
of  time  or  money  or  energy. 

IJ  There  is  also  a  constraining  motive  at 
work.  As  he  looks  back  over  his  past  he  is 
conscious  of  all  the  evil  he  has  done,  the  souls 
he  has  hurt,  the  chances  of  doing  great  and 
noble  things  he  has  let  slip  past  him,  and,  as 
he  thinks  of  what  might  have  been,  a  longing 
for  atonement  seizes  him.  He  now  stands 
ready  for  any  task  however  great,  for  any 
service  however  distasteful.  His  repentance 
is  thus  transformed  into  a  moral  dynamic. 
It  does  not  paralyze  his  energies;  it  inspires 
them.  To  some  whom  he  has  wronged  he 
cannot,  alas,  pay  the  debt  he  owes;  they  have 
passed  beyond  his  reach,  safe  with  God,  and 
no  wrong  can  hurt  them  any  more.    But  he 

72 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

is  not  thereby  released  from  the  burden  of 
his  obligation.  No,  the  debt  he  owes  the 
dead  he  must  pay  the  living,  for  only  by 
atonement  can  the  soul  win  redemption. 
Thus  the  new  life  is  at  once  a  gift  and  a  task, 
a  present  possession  and  a  future  achieve- 
ment. 

fl  The  new  man,  face  to  face  with  unac- 
customed tasks  and  ever-multiplying  duties, 
does  not  stand  alone.  He  is  dimly  conscious 
that  around  him  are  mysterious  forces  which 
mean  him  well,  and  these  forces  are  made 
available  by  prayer.  Prayer  is  not  peculiar 
to  the  new  life;  it  is  a  human  and  universal 
phenomenon;  it  is  an  act  or  a  state  of  man 
as  man.  We  may  say  that  it  is  an  instinct, 
if  we  remember  that  we  are  not  using  the 
word  in  the  strictly  biological  sense  meaning 
inherited,  or  innate  psychic  tendency,  but 
loosely,  as  meaning  an  impulse  deep  rooted 
in  the  soul  yet  capable  of  atrophy  through 
disuse.  How  often  has  a  careless  and  self- 
indulgent  soul,  suddenly  faced  with  danger 
or  death,  been  stripped  of  all  the  thick  layers 

of  evil  thought  and  base  desire,  the  growth 
73 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

of  years,  as  the  whole  man  goes  forth  in  an 
agonizing  cry  to  a  higher  power  for  help. 
The  cynic  will  say  that  the  selfish  man  only 
seeks  self-preservation,  but  a  deeper  insight 
sees  here  unveiled  the  organic  links  that  bind 
the  finite  spirit  in  its  inmost  essence  to  the 
Infinite.  Prayer,  however,  is  more  than  an 
instinct  which  reveals  itself  only  in  critical 
moments  of  need  or  alarm;  it  is  the  sustain- 
ing principle  of  the  new  life;  it  is  the  channel 
through  which  power  comes  to  refresh  the 
springs  of  moral  action.  Or,  to  change  the 
figure,  it  is  the  act  by  which  we  switch  our- 
selves on  to  the  central  dynamo  of  the  uni- 
verse. Without  it  the  new  life  would  col- 
lapse and  the  man  would  sink  back  into  the 
old  naturalism. 

€][  The  new  man  does  not  need  to  be  told 
to  pray,  no  more  than  he  needs  to  be  told 
to  eat  or  to  take  exercise  or  to  do  any  of 
the  things  needful  for  his  physical  well-being. 
Formerly,  indeed,  prayer  was  a  bore  and  a 
burden,  or  a  remnant  of  traditional  respect- 
ability, an  empty  form,  a  mechanical  gesture 
that  meant  nothing;    now  it  is  the  loving 

74 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

intercourse  of  friend  with  friend,  the  source 
of  comfort,  strength,  and  peace;  the  power 
that  invigorates  the  will,  calms  and  steadies 
the  mind,  lifts  the  whole  personality  into  the 
region  of  hope  and  inspiration  and  high 
adventure.  To-day  we  no  longer  dispute 
about  the  efficacy  of  prayer;  that  stage  of 
the  controversy  is  past.  We  may  still  argue 
about  the  mechanism  by  which  prayer  works, 
or  about  the  ultimate  origin  of  the  spiritual 
energy  developed  in  the  act  or  state  of 
prayer — whether  it  is  to  be  accounted  for 
by  "suggestion"  (whatever  that  may  mean) 
or  by  the  influx  of  "metatherial"  influences; 
but  no  serious  thinker  doubts  that  prayer 
effects  changes  which  otherwise  would  not 
have  taken  place. 
J  J|  As  the  new  man  progresses  he  will 
discover  that  he  cannot  rest  in  the  imper- 
sonal; that  he  must  rise  above  it  and  speak 
with  God  as  if  He  were  a  Person.  But  if 
just  now  this  is  impossible  to  him,  if  he  pre- 
fers to  think  of  God  as  a  force  or  principle, 
he  can  pray  and  he  may  count  on  many  of 

the  benefits  of  prayer.    Hence  the  apparently 

75 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

strange  statement  of  Mr.  W.  F.  H.  Myers 
that  the  object  of  our  prayers,  whether  per- 
sonal or  impersonal,  is  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence, is  relatively  true.  But  prayer,  in  its 
highest  form,  as  we  see  it  in  the  life  of  the 
Master  of  prayer,  implies  the  meeting  of 
thought  with  thought,  of  will  with  will.  And 
in  proportion  as  prayer  rises  to  the  heights 
of  personal  communion  its  benefits  will  mul- 
tiply and  its  reality  and  validity  will  become 
more  and  more  an  assured  conviction.  In 
two  directions  especially  the  new  man  will 
experience  the  value  of  prayer.  On  the  one 
hand  he  will  learn  that  prayer  is  a  dynamic; 
it  moves  the  will.  It  was  said  of  a  distin- 
guished man  of  letters  that  the  moment 
anything  assumed  the  shape  of  a  duty  he  felt 
himself  constitutionally  incapable  of  dis- 
charging it.  And  certainly  for  all  of  us, 
though  for  some  more  than  others,  a  rein- 
forcement of  our  native  energies  is  a  neces- 
sity. 

IJ  Now  it  is  prayer  that  arms  the  will  to 
beat  down  temptation,  or  to  concentrate  its 
forces  on  the  accomplishment  of  some  for- 

76 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

bidding  task.  This  statement  is  supported 
by  abundant  testimony.  Here  is  one  which 
I  quote  from  a  private  letter  written  by  a 
New  England  physician  to  his  nephew.  He 
says:  "I  stand  here  in  my  front  yard  and 
talk  with  God,  when  I  feel  like  it,  or  when  I 
am  on  the  road  anywhere,  silently  or  audibly. 
He  is  just  over  back  of  a  leaning  pine  you 
may  remember  to  have  seen  directly  across 
the  road  from  our  door.  I  can't  see  Him, 
but  I  can  feel  His  presence  just  as  I  feel 
yours,  or  your  Dad's,  or  dear  Tante  May's 
presence,  or  my  mother's  presence;  and  the 
thought  and  feeling  I  have  of  God  or  of  my 
mother  or  of  Tante  May  or  of  your  beautiful 
mother,  Sophie  Zela,  is  one  of  peace  and 
grace  and  faith,  of  beauty,  of  love  and  of 
confidence.  .  .  .  Cultivate  the  habit  of 
prayer.  Pray  to  the  Great  Spirit  every  time 
you  start  out  to  do  anything  that  you  know 
will  test  your  powers.  Pray  at  any  time  and 
everywhere.  I  say  to  the  Great  Spirit,  for 
that  is  the  name  I  love  best  for  God,  when- 
ever I  feel  I  am  up  against  it  and  weakening, 
or  likely  to  prove  not  my  best  self  in  some 

77 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

trying  situation:  'Help  me  out,  Great  Spirit, 
will  you?  I  am  a  poor  fellow;  I  have  not 
cultivated  my  gifts  as  I  should  have  done; 
I  lack  strength  of  character  in  many  ways; 
Help  me  out,  dear  Great  Spirit.9  And  just  in 
proportion  as  I  am  in  earnest  and  have  faith, 
my  prayer  is  answered — sometimes  not  at  all 
and  sometimes  so  fully  that  I  feel  a  flood  of 
light  and  beauty,  of  love  and  devotion,  pour- 
ing in  upon  me." 

C][  Other  things  being  equal,  the  praying  man 
is  more  efficient  physically,  mentally,  spiritu- 
ally, than  the  non-praying  man.  And  this 
argument,  perhaps,  will  in  these  days,  when 
efficiency  would  appear  to  be  the  one  thing 
needful,  commend  this  spiritual  grace  to 
those  who  might  remain  cold  to  more  tran- 
scendental considerations.  But  we  need  not 
only  to  do  the  divine  will,  we  need  to  know 
what  that  will  is.  It  is  only  in  the  silence 
that  we  can  hear  the  divine  Voice  and  distin- 
guish it  from  the  voices  of  our  own  weaker 
self  and  of  the  world  without.  Prayer  is  thus 
a  school  of  spiritual  education  in  which  the 
new  man  advances  from  day  to  day  in  the 

78 


THE    NEW   LIFE 

knowledge  of  the  best  things  of  life.  In- 
herited prejudices  die  out,  new  and  higher 
aims  are  revealed,  larger  ideals  for  self  and 
for  the  world  are  gradually  formed,  and  thus 
is  won  a  sane  and  enlightened  conscience, 
the  only  safe  guide  through  the  rocks  and 
shoals  of  the  voyage  of  life. 

€|  The  new  man  creates  for  himself  a  new 
theology,  or  philosophy  of  spiritual  experi- 
ence. Feelings,  however  beautiful,  are  change- 
able and  fleeting;  the  will,  though  indis- 
pensable, needs  direction.  Apart  from  intel- 
ligence, feeling  and  will  are  merely  non-moral 
natural  forces.  To  lift  them  into  the  sphere 
of  the  moral  and  spiritual  they  need  the 
guidance  of  thought — that  is,  faith  in  some 
idea  which  the  mind  accepts  as  good  and 
true.  The  man  who  has  tasted  in  any  degree 
the  experiences  already  described  cannot  rest 
there,  but  must  go  on  to  ask  what  their 
meaning  is  and  what  the  truths  are  which 
they  imply.  He  will,  therefore,  gradually 
form  a  simple  elastic  framework  of  vital  con- 
victions on  which  the  mind  can  rest  with 
satisfaction  while  ever  seeking  to  comprehend 

79 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

them  more  and  more  fully,  and  to  advance  to 
other  truths  that  have  not  as  yet  come  within 
his  ken.  He  is  compelled  by  a  psychological 
necessity  to  do  this. 

^f  The  late  Professor  Paulsen  of  Berlin  has 
said  that  every  man  is  a  philosopher,  the 
difference  between  one  man  and  another 
being  not  that  one  has  a  philosophy  and  the 
other  goes  through  life  without  it,  but  that 
the  one  tries  to  bring  unity  and  coherence 
into  his  thinking  about  the  problems  of  ex- 
istence, whereas  the  other  is  content  to  car- 
penter together  stray  fragments,  off  bits  and 
scraps  gathered  from  the  floating  traditions 
of  school  and  home  and  church,  and  from  the 
newspapers  or  books  which  happen  to  come 
his  way.  But  the  new  life  is  comparatively 
weak  and  inefficient,  especially  in  an  age  of 
science  like  our  own,  unless  it  is  based  on 
truth  which  can  be  vindicated  to  the  intelli- 
gence by  being  shown  to  be  based  on  experi- 
ence. Therefore,  the  new  man  will  throw 
into  the  background  ideas  and  doctrines 
which  cannot  be  submitted  to  practical  tests. 
He  will  select  those  great  ideas  without  which 

80 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

the  new  life  cannot  be  realized  in  all  its  full- 
ness. 

€][  Beginning,  it  may  be,  with  some  vague 
traditional  ideas  about  God  and  the  future 
life,  he  will  earnestly  set  himself,  so  far  as 
opportunity  offers,  to  clear  up  his  mind  on 
these  two  primary  convictions.  He  will 
ponder  the  divine  self-revelation  in  nature, 
in  the  human  soul,  and  in  the  life  and  death 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  he  will  work  free  of 
the  inherited  ideas  about  death,  and  the  life 
beyond  death,  and  he  will  constrain  his  mind 
to  formulate  a  spiritual  theory  of  immortality. 
Around  these  central  principles  other  truths 
will  gradually  organize  themselves,  and  the 
test  to  which  the  whole  will  be  constantly 
brought  is  the  test  of  life.  Whatever  en- 
hances personality,  whatever  gives  more  sig- 
nificance to  life,  whatever  impels  to  ethical 
achievements,  must  correspond  to  some  ulti- 
mate reality.  This  conviction  of  the  ultimate 
unity  of  the  good  and  the  true  is  a  postulate 
of  the  higher  life,  an  imperative  without  which 
we  can  make  nothing  of  this  world,  or  of 
man's  existence  in  it. 

81 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

f]J  Finally,  the  new  man  is  an  optimist. 
Neither  men  nor  demons  daunt  him.  He  is 
conscious  that  all  the  higher  forces  of  the 
universe  are  ranged  on  his  side;  all  things  are 
working  together  for  his  good;  new  acces- 
sions of  strength  and  self-confidence  fill  him 
with  boundless  hope  for  himself  and  for  others. 
The  vices  and  follies  which  he  laments  re- 
ceive a  new  interpretation;  they  are  trans- 
formed into  a  ladder  whereby  he  climbs  to 
unexpected  heights  of  goodness;  the  moral 
blunders  of  the  past  become  stepping-stones 
to  higher  things.  Even  the  consciousness 
that  the  power  of  evil  still  lurks  within,  which 
is  probably  the  worst  enemy  of  the  new 
life,  is  eventually  overcome.  The  man 
breathes  a  new  and  stimulating  air;  he  is 
lifted  above  his  ordinary  and  empirical  self. 
Evil  has  lost  its  prestige.  Under  the  old 
order  of  things  he  thought  that  he  had  to  go 
on  sinning  and  repenting;  now  he  is  pos- 
sessed with  such  a  love  of  righteousness  that 
as  he  looks  back  over  the  years  he  wonders 
how  it  was  ever  possible  for  him  to  have 
fallen  under  the  power  of  such  cheap  and 

82 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

tawdry  seductions.  Like  Dante  on  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration,  he  hears  a  voice 
proclaiming  him  "master  of  his  fate  and 
captain  of  his  soul." 

Free,  upright,  healthy  is  thine  own  will  now, 
And  not  to  do  as  it  commands  were  weak; 
So,  crowned  and  mitered,  o'er  thyself  rule  thou.1 

€][  His  optimism  is  all-embracing.  He  de- 
spairs of  no  man  however  sinful,  however 
lost  to  all  that  is  good.  For  in  his  own  case 
life  had  to  be  built  up  afresh  from  the  very- 
foundations.  And  what  this  spiritual  re- 
construction has  done  for  him  it  can  do  for 
everybody.  He  is  prepared,  indeed,  for  dis- 
appointment, but  he  knows  the  triumph  of 
the  good  is  certain.  His  optimism  springs 
out  of  his  spiritual  experience  and  is,  there- 
fore, not  open  to  the  charge  of  shallowness  or 
sentimentalism.  Spurious  optimism  is  easy- 
going acquiescence  in  things  as  they  are,  or 
it  is  a  mood  born  of  a  good  digestion  and  a 
solid  account  in  the  bank.  Genuine  optimism 
knows  that  there  is  a  good  time  coming,  for 

1  Purgatory,  Canto  xxvii.      (Plumptre's  trans.) 


THE   NEW   LIFE 

it  knows  that  God  is  at  work  in  the  world, 
that  His  purpose  will  triumph  in  the  end, 
that  "what  began  best  can't  end  worst/' 
In  the  strength  of  this  assurance  he  faces 
the  sin  and  pain  and  disorder  of  the  world, 
and  reads  them  aright  as  purely  provisional 
in  character,  a  spiritual  education  the  end 
and  aim  of  which  is  to  lead  men  to  make  the 
right  choice  and  to  walk  in  the  right  way.  He 
finds  God  everywhere,  and  in  the  ultimate 
analysis  nothing  but  God.  And  God  is  the 
self-revealing  Love,  intent  on  the  good  of 
every  creature  He  has  made. 


THE   END 


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